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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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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1880-1882
Text: 1880 May 14 Ingersoll came today. 17 Returned today from Auchmoody's lake whither we went on Saturday to camp in the woods. Had an idyllic time. The woods dry clean and delicious. What talks and yarns and mutual confession of sins. The time sped all too quickly. It seems like a beautiful dream. Some of I's experiences are very rich. I wish I dare to write them down. In the moonlight we floated up and down the glassy lake and mused and talked; then captured a little green piping frog...
Show more1880 May 14 Ingersoll came today. 17 Returned today from Auchmoody's lake whither we went on Saturday to camp in the woods. Had an idyllic time. The woods dry clean and delicious. What talks and yarns and mutual confession of sins. The time sped all too quickly. It seems like a beautiful dream. Some of I's experiences are very rich. I wish I dare to write them down. In the moonlight we floated up and down the glassy lake and mused and talked; then captured a little green piping frog by the light of a match. Have never heard this frog so far north before. In the woods found the little chickweed wintergreen in bloom. The honey bees were working on the blossoms of the white oak. May 21 Went home to-day. Ingersoll with me. Father well and mother gaining a little. Very hot. Saw areas of meadow land down by the river covered with bluets -- they tinged the ground like a bluish hoar frost. Gathered handfuls of the Canada violet and found that they had a delicious odor -- suggesting apple blossoms. Wild ginger in bloom and the painted trillium. 23 Went up on Old Clump. Found the Clintonia borealis ready to bloom. Passed a delightful day. The buttercup just appearing in the meadows -- the dandelions raising their globes of silky down everywhere -- in places making the slopes white as with frost. The bobolinks in all their glory their songs ring through my dreams. It is the most striking song in this part of the country at this season. 29 Started on my tour of bank examining this morning. At Hobart my Michigan friend joined me, and we rode well content through the delightful land. She was happier than I was. Her star was in the ascendant. To Andes and home the next day. 27 Over the mountain after trout to-day. Took a fine lot. 28 Back home to-day. In the morning Mother was being dressed as I left. She looked quite bright and well, but presently said "Oh, if only had right mind, if only had right mind" and began to cry. Poor, dear Mother, how my heart yearns for her! 30 A steady delicious rain all day; the first of the month; a very dry and a very hot May. June 6 More rain last night and this morning. A wet June so far. Sad, sad are my days. [Two erased lines] 16 Home to-day with wife and Julian. Father and Cal. met us at the train. Mother greatly rejoiced to see Julian. 19 A delightful day in the woods with F. 21 Back home to-day. Mother a little better. 25 Start for head of the Rondout today with Ingersoll and family and my friend F. A whole week in the woods by the beautiful stream. A prolonged pic-nic. Trout and wild strawberries every day. Such a time as seldom comes to a man, more than once in his life time. F. was very good, a tender, thoughtful, yearning, loving, intelligent woman. But that scene in the road when she accompanied me a short distance on the way for milk! How her face flushed, how her eyes filled, how her lip trembled! She was cut to the heart by my confession. When I returned she was cold like marble and looked as if she had had a fit of sickness. [crossed out: Bad weather] I slept near her that night in the 1880 tent (for it rained) but she made no sign neither did I. But the next day matters improved as I told her the whole history of the [erased word] and in a few days the skies bright again. She is a remarkable woman. July 5 Cool for the time of year and very dry. A heavy sadness oppresses. The first cicada to-day. 7 A song sparrow nearly deprived of his gift of song -- can only get out a few faint notes, as if he had a terrible head cold, yet he sings as industriously as any. 15 Fine rain, this morning also. last Monday the 12th Julian can just put his chin on my table. He talks a good deal. Honey-bees work on Sumac, the Alanthus, and vipers bugloss, and climatis. 21 Went to Lake Mohonk to-day, a cool, fine day. Saw a humming bird gathering the down of the wild lettuce for its nest. Near the Walkill saw a number of Red headed wood peckers, one a young one. Getting to be a rare bird. Kingbirds apparently fighting their young about my apple-trees. The old bird alights on the back of the young, there is a great fluttering and squeaking and snapping of beaks, when the young takes flight. Is it to stir them up and make them fly about or is it to train them into the king-birds peculiar mode of warfare? "It is true however says Mr. Renan "that the farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdom and the surest means of finding happiness" "There is nothing sweeter than the return of joy which follows the renunciation of joy." "It is better to be a human-being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied." J. S. Mill. Oct 4 Home to-day. Mother about the same. Father well. The common violet in bloom all over the fields. In the woods on the mountain I gathered a hand full of the Canada violet. It was distinctly sweet-scented. The fall fearfully dry. 13 Nothing but light showers since June. The wells and springs all failing. 20 Home to see Uncle Edmund Kelly and Aunt Salina. They are old, but well and not much changed since I saw them in 1873. Mother was quite overcome to see Uncle Edmund. Dec 20 Mother died today at 10:25. It is Fathers 78 birth day. I came home Saturday night. Mother kissed me and seemed quite bright. She looked better on Sunday and Father said he felt quite encouraged about her. But in the afternoon she was taken with vomiting and grew worse. I was up with her nearly all night. Paroxysms set in at 11 o'clock and continued more or less all night. The last words I heard her speak, or that she ever spoke was to Margaret, "go to bed, do go to bed" she said, as if she was half wearied with our efforts to relieve her. I went to bed at 2 a.m. but they called me at 4. While dressing I felt that the end was [crossed out: nigh] near. The paroxysms (of an epileptic character) grew more and more severe. I could not stay in the room. About 9 o'clock I went over to the stack where the boys had foddered the cattle. It was a relief to get out and look at cold impassive nature and the tranquil feeding cattle. I know Mother would not have deserted my dying bed in that way but I could not stand it. As we returned Eden and I were standing out in the road on the big hill near the old pennyroyal rock, when they called us to hurry up. How my heart sank! When I entered the room, Mother was bolstered up with chairs and pillows and was evidently within a few moments of her end. The Doctor sat by her side and the family stood around silent or weeping. Mother was getting purple, the heart was beginning to fail, the eyes rolled from side to side, her breathing grew shorter and shorter and then ceased, her eyes closed; the lip quivered, and our dear mother was dead. It was a cold still winter day. Fathers grief is very touching at times. But the clouds come and go quickly with him as with a child. Homer and Jane came in the evening of Tuesday. 22 To day Mother was buried. A bright cold day, the air full of glistening frost particles and a curious fog clinging to the mountain tops. Mother looked as if wrapped in a profound calm and peace. Her features wore a more severe and noble expression than they ever had in life. After they had carried the coffin down and placed it in the sleigh father stood by the window and looked out after it and I heard his agonized words, "I shall see her no more, my dear wife, I shall see her no more." Few men have ever loved a woman more. he clung to her more than she to him. Mothers heart and life were devoted to her children, she could not do enough for them; but she was often curt and unkind to father. Not so with him; his children were secondary -- she was first always. "There was never a better mother" he said, "and never a better wife" He did not go down to the church; we thought it not prudent for him to go on account of his delicate health. Elder Hewitt preached one of his curious, incoherent sermons on the Elect -- such a sermon as poor Mother had listened to a thousand times and thought she enjoyed. In the course of it he stated that he thought we should not know and love our friends and kindred, as such in the other world. He thought it contrary to Scripture. The reason was, that some of them might be in hell, in everlasting torment, and we could not be happy, even in heaven, if we knew this was so. Of course we could not. It was a poor foolish sermon in one sense, and yet it was sincere and heartfelt. The Elder thinks his own time is near. 25 It is Christmas and I have but one thought "Mother is dead." Her toil worn hands and aching heart are at last at rest. After life's fitful fever, she sleeps well. 30 Every hour in the day I see her image and hear her voice. In the night I awake and my heart cries "Mother", "Mother!" The saddest of all is that I can eat and sleep and read and laugh and go about my affairs cheerfully with Mother in her grave. Very cold; ther. 10 below this morning. and at zero all day. Already six weeks of severe winter weather, but no deep snow. 31 Clear and cold with a regular Indian summer haze; therr. down to 7 below this morning. 1881 Jany 1st Clear, still and cold. Mercury down to 14 below at Hibbards. 10 below at my house. Yet how red and warm the sun looked when he came up this morning, and what a soft warm haze has filled the air all day. Indeed these are the winter dog-days. Very cold all over the country: from 18 to 28 below in this part of the state. In Washington 14 below; in Richmond 12 below; In Jacksonville, Fla., 19 above. It is cold enough to freeze the dead in their graves. 6 Now comes the harvest of the cold weather -- snow, snow. These bright cold days and nights seem to have begotten unlimited snow in the upper air. The ice-harvesting in full blast on the river. Everywhere I turn the image of Mother, her voice, form, features, ways -- is constantly before me. She appears always a little withdrawn, a little in shadow, as in life. Mother was not a bright, chirp, smiling woman, tho' as happy perhaps as most persons, but her happiness was always shaded, never in a strong light. The sadness which motherhood and the care of a large family, and a large yearning heart beget was upon her. I see myself in her perpetually. A longing which nothing can satisfy I share with her. Whatever is most valuable in my books comes from her -- the background of feeling, of pity, of love, etc. comes from her. 1881 On the 5th they took my poor cow away to be slaughtered while I was in N.Y. I have had her 6 years, the best and handsomest cow I ever owned; clean limbed, sharp hoofed, round, deep buttocks, high-strung, tho' gentle, an easy keeper, full of cream and butter, but destruction to the trees when she could reach them. 10 Julian is my comfort, my life. How my soul clings to him. He is a remarkably bright, handsome and engaging child. He now just begins to use the word wish. Among other things he says "I wish you get me seven league boots" as he has heard me say my big boots were seven league boots. He cannot understand the death of his grandma. He insists with great emphasis, however, that Grandpa is not buried in the ground. "Grandpa live" he says, "and coming to see Dudy this day." 15 It seems incredible that Mother should be dead. How many times during recent years when I was home, or she was here, have I charged myself to observe her well, to note all her ways and all she said, and show her every kindness, for before I saw her again she might be snatched away. I have tried to remember her last words to me and her last look when we parted, for my heart was full of a blind fear that they might really be the last. Well, she has lived her life, 72 years. How little she knew and saw of what there is in the world to see and know, and how much she felt and underwent. Her life was one ceaseless round of toil from childhood. After she was married there was the housework and the dairy and a baby nearly every year. Early in the spring came the sugar making, then all summer the butter and the cheese; in the fall the cutting and drying of apples and the butchering; in the winter the making of clothes for the children, knitting, patching, etc. Then there was the spinning and weaving of both flax and wool, and the making of carpets, and a thousand other nameless tasks. How many summer days she spent in the fields and meadows under the burning sun picking strawberries. One summer I remember she went away up to the old Clump, strawberrying. It was in early haying time. I had discovered the berries there after they were all gone in the lowlands. Then the raspberries and blackberries she picked! The day before her fatal stroke she picked a small pail of blackberries on her way home from Abigails. It was just at dusk that she came home. I was standing in the door as she came in, much fatigued. That was the 5th of Sept. 1879. Those were the last berries she ever picked. That night as we all sat in the kitchen there was much talk, and some angry talk on the part of Margaret and Mother about another girl. Olly had left sick, and Margaret said they must have another girl. Mother said she could do half the work; she could take care of the milk and butter just as she used to, or she could do the housework. She talked with much spirit. The next morning when she got up she put on her old work clothes as if she intended to take her half of the work. She went out doors and then came in and went to the stove to fill the tea kettle when her extended hand was arrested; the blow fell; her head dropped and she staggered to the fall, when father and Margaret caught her; her work was done. Great Nature said, "Enough. No more toil for thee. Thy rest is at hand." 18 Day after day and every day [crossed out: I] as I sit in my library I hear Julian training through the house, running from the pantry through into the dining room and back, for hours at a time, playing he is a train of cars; he toots long and loud and fills the lower part of the house with the sound of his feet and his whistle. When he is still than I know he is building cars and boats and houses etc. with his blocks in the window. 25 Solid winter weather continues, and the Indian summer haze in the air continues. Thermometer from 10 to 14 below this morning and yet the air looks like that of the softest October. 26 It is singular that in the winter the cold weather is not cold and the warm weather is not warm. With the thermometer at zero and below the cold stings but it is no trouble to keep warm out doors or in; but as soon as it goes up to 25 and the wind blows from the S.W. one is chilled to the bones, and the furnace requires more coal to warm the house. No doubt it is true that in the South they suffer more from the cold in winter than we do in the North. 28 The first windy and tempestuous day of the winter: a roaring lion, thermometer ranging from 10 to 18 above; looks as if we were getting over the ridge toward spring. The cold so far has been so even and uniform that there was nothing to start a wind; as soon as the heat of the sun begins to make an impression the winds will perhaps begin. Have nearly finished my White essay, begun last week. Feb 1. A terrible day, thermometer down to 2 above this morning and at 8 at noon and the wind blowing a gale from the north; the sky overcast with one unbroken [crossed out unseamed] seamless cloud. The ice-harvesters unable to work. 2 Bright and still and very cold -- down to 6 below at my house. The express trains this morning make a sharp hissing and sissing sound as if the track and wheels were red-hot. Mrs. B. left for N.Y at 10 to-day. Lizzie gone also; a capital girl. 6 Clear hard, bright days, the thermometer at 20 or 22 in the middle of the day, and at or near zero in the morning. The soft Indian summer haze again filling the distance. This looks like a continuance of the cold. 8 Went home this day with Julian -- reached home about 8 1/2 P.M. Father very glad to see us. 9 "Fifty five years ago to-day" (1826) said Father, "I and your Mother were married" and his tears flowed afresh. "Fifty five years ago last Sunday night" he went on "I stayed with her the last time before we were married. I rode your Uncle Martins old sorrel mare over to her folkses. Poor Father talks of Mother nearly all the time, and kisses her likencss many times a day. He cannot utter a sentence about her without breaking down before it is finished. He tried many times to recall where she had been one time a few years ago when he met her at the depot and was so glad to see her. He said "I suppose I was on a half cry. I wanted to kiss her, but I knew she would be mad. Seeing how overjoyed I was she said, "Chancey, don't be foolish" He says he seems to hear her every day when he is mourning saying, "Chancey, don't be a fool." Once he said as he was sleeping on the lounge, he heard her call him just as she had thousands of times in life , and it woke him up instantly. "Oh! he said, no one knows how I felt. He was quite poorly but improved much during my visit. Every night I woke up several times to hear him cough and cough in the room below me. As I was looking at him one day, he suddenly seemed like my former self. This is me I thought, not yet come into this body, narrowed and darkened in mind, old and deeply afflicted. I could see myself plainly in him. Father has great faith and no self-consciousness. He is reading the Bible through again, he said. He had been reading about Elijah and the false prophets and he told me the story. When he came to the triumph of Elijah, how fire from heaven came down and consumed his sacrifice, and all the water, etc., he wept like a child. He believed all these things absolutely. He told me that I nearly cost mother her life. She was sick all that summer. Mary Montgomery (now Mrs. Dart) took care of me the first few months of my infant life. How minutely he remembers events of long ago. He came on the farm the 15 of April 1828. He remembers who built the wall out along the road beyond the old garden, and that he paid him twenty cents a rod for laying it up. He remembers all his oxen and horses, and what he paid for each team and where he got them. 9 Our first winter thaw set in to-day and continued with heavy rains till Saturday night. 12 Saturday. returned home to-day. Julian not well. 14 Bright and not very cold. Julian better. (Hold him all one night in my arms.) 20 Quite warm and spring like. Snow still deep. The catkins on the alders seem actually to have started. I have measured them twice. When I was home father asked me with great deliberation "John, do you suppose any body from these United States ever visited the country where Christ was born?" Father has asked that question several times before, and seems to not quite believe or realize my answer. I suppose it seems incredible to him that such could be the fact. He said one day that if he had his life to live over again there was but one country he should like to see, but that he supposed he should not see it then, even if he had ever so much money, and that was the country where Christ was born. 26 Clear and cold -- ther down to zero this morning. Saw two blue-birds to-day, both males; they kept together. Mrs. Booth came today. 27 Warm; saw two male blue-birds warbling and calling cheerily. The male bluebird can and does spread his tail as he flits about at this season in a way to make him look very gay and dressy. It alters his expression completely and made him look alert bright, beau-like and every inch a male. The grass is green under the snow and has grown perceptibly. Mrs. B and I walked in Holland's grounds. Saw the red-breasted nut hatch and heard his soft, baby-like piping. Mrs. B. was greatly delighted, a new bird to her. Mch 1st Stormy, half snow, half rain, but indoors a [several words erased] 4 Stormy again; a bad day for the inauguration of Garfield. A brighter color has certainly come upon the willows and upon the osier cornel; the former are in places a fresh bright yellow; the latter a deep purple-red. Some of the willow trees look as if a yellow setting sun were gilding their tops. I note them in the valley along the creek. I think the sumac bobs, too, are a deeper, fresher crimson or purple the berries are certainly more acid and lively. I even thought a red-squirrel that skipped along the fence in front of me had a fresher redder tinge to his tail. 6 Sunday. Warm and thawy. The prettiest thing I saw in my walk this afternoon was the willows [S. discolor?] [crossed out: along] back in Hibbard's marshy meadow. The catkins are just starting from beneath the scales or bracts, and the long slender wands, glancing in the sun presented a new and novel appearance. Each scale was like a tiny [crossed out: gl] mittened hand pressing a perl, which was escaping from it, close to the willow branch. The mitten was black or very dark brown and the treasure it clasps is of a soft pearly whiteness. The wands were really decked with pearls. 7 A perfect spring day at last -- still, bright, warm and without a cloud. Tapped two trees; the sap runs, the snow runs, everything runs. Blue-birds the only spring birds yet. Thermometer 42 in the shade. A perfect sap day. A perfect sap day is a crystalline day; the night must have a keen edge of frost and the day a keen edge of [crossed out: wind] air and sun. Wind N. or N.W. The least film, the least breath from the South, the least suggestion of life or cell growth, and the day is marred as a sap day. Maple sap is maple frost melted by the sun. 9 P.M. a soft, large starred night; the moon in her second quarter, perfectly still and freezing. Venus throbbing low in the west. A crystalline night. 8 Another crystalline sap day of melted frost, of liquid ice and snow, wind N.N.E. The veins of the maples fairly thrill. Under the maple by the spring there is a shower of sap from the branches where probably the squirrels have bitten them. Julian and I make a fire in the leaves by the old maple at the spring. 9 Rain, rain. 10 Crossed the river on the ice to Hyde Park. Cool and cloudy. 13 Sunday. Cloudy, still, soft, yet a good sap day. No frost in the air, but frost on the ground in the shape of new fallen snow. A sap snow; it has a magical effect upon the old trees. Three robins to-day, the first of the season, though Ennis says he saw one on Wednesday. 14 4 P.M. The ice on the river has just started. Presto! what a change, the [crossed out: River] dead is alive again, resurrected. Where was that white rigid death-like expanse but an hour ago, is now the tender dimpling sparkling water. All the forenoon I have noted the signs: the river stirred a little, put forth a little streak of water here and there, made breathing holes, as it were. At 3 o'clock, the ice was rent here and there, and shoved one piece upon another slightly; there was something alive and restless underneath them. Then by and by, the whole body of ice began to move down stream very gently, almost imperceptibly at first, then with a steady, deliberate pace till the whole expanse of the river in front of my house lay dancing in the light again. The resurrection of the river, but the dead, oh, the dead! 16 First song sparrow this morning, first black birds -- starlings with their "gurgle-ee" note. 17 April like weather. One sparrow yesterday -- dozens of them this morning, and all singing. Also, snow birds chattering, nut hatches calling and woodpeckcrs drumming. It not at the door of any grub he raps, but at the door of Spring. Am writing my Thoreau article and doing fairly well. 19 The turtle-dove to-day. 20 Phoebe this morning -- heard her note before I was up. No chipmunks yet. Grass greening a little. 22 A sparrow morning, still, chill, overcast. Everywhere the song of the song sparrow and the jingle and chatter of the snow bird (himalis). Some kind of spawn in a ditch full of water by the road side. Must bring some of it home and see what it turns out to be. I suspect lizards. 27 Roads dry and settled some days. Heard the first little frog at 6 P.M. back in Mannings swamp, thermometer below freezing. To-night clear and windy; the big March bellows is working. Venus to-night is like a great lamp in the sky. The stars [crossed out: actually] seem brighter such nights, as if the wind blew them up, like great burning coals. Venus actually seems to flare in the wind. 28 A bright, clear, and rather dry and hard March day; the river rumpled and crumpled by the wind. (The low platform cars Julian calls "mash-down cars," as if some one had sat on them and flattened them out.) 28th continued -- A day full of strong light, unusual; a strange lightness and clearness all around the horizon as if the wind made the day burn brighter. The wind probably purges the air and makes it clean. In the north, the Catskills white with snow stand out clear and sharp. A day for purification by fire, to burn over the dry fields and weedy places. Have just returned from fighting fire of my own putting out this morning back in Mannings field. See the smoke from fires all about, and smell the burning -- a good smell. 31The bright windy day brought 3 days of cloud and storm. Snow and rain yesterday, and soft and squally to-day. Am still working on my Thoreau article. Heard a shrike to-night on my walk to the P.O. first thought it was a squeaking axletree or pulley wheel or something of the kind. It faintly suggested the warble of various birds. as usual the shrike was perched on the topmost twig of the tree in which he sat. Two mornings since saw five swan flying over in single file, the first I ever saw; they looked very large spread out on the sky -- like great geese. How gently their wings flapped. [crossed out: only] the tips of them apparently doing most of the work. They went North. It was a noble sight -- an express train bound for Labrador. The hens saw them first and asked each other curiously what birds those might be. When you outrun your feet when you legs fail to keep up with your body and head: you fall In some respects the city is more favorable to the production of literature than the country. There is more electricity in the mental atmosphere. But offsetting this is the [crossed out: tendency] life of clubs, and the tendency of men to get to-gether and chatter and chaffer. and talk and talk. and there is nothing that kills production like this incessant palaver and rubbing of your heads together. It is a kind of intellectual onanism. April 3 Sunday. My 44th birth day. My first motherless birth day. She who gave me birth sleeps her last sleep. A clear bright dry and rather sharp day, wind in the north, as it has been most of the time lately. Julian and I still alone and peace reigns in the house. Finished my article on Thoreau and sent it off. In the morning saw the downy woodpecker at his spring drumming -- must make a note of it. In afternoon found the skunk cabbage in bloom; probably been in bloom over a week. Bees busy carrying off flower from my meal barrel. The dust themselves in the bran and then while on the wing pack their flower into their baskets. In less than a minute the baskets on their thighs show quite a grist. The chipmunk not out yet. 6 Cold and disagreeable. No good sleep lately. Mind full of undigested sleep. Unhappy. It is said the fireflies in China all flash in consert. Now, as far as you can see they all veil their lamps; then all flame out again, making a very pretty effect. 9 Saturday. Wife home to-day at 2 P.M. absent since Feb 2d. Pretty sad, much troubled about herself. Bright, dry days from the north, but sad to me from want of sleep. Also wifes sadness reflected in me. Julian has a very bad eye. First meadowlark today. 10 A gloomy house, a gloomy outlook. In the afternoon walked back of the hill. The finest fox-sparrow song I ever heard. How it went to my sad heart! Of all sparrow songs this is the finest. Either I have never heard the full song before or else this bird was an exceptionally fine songster among its kind. The song sounded strange and foreign to me. and I had to look sharp to be sure of my bird. It almost made me weep. It echoed in my heart and the thought of it clung to me long and long. So plaintive, so bright and prophetic of what? sadness or joy? On Monday, I heard the same song near Hibbard's. The hazel in bloom. A pool full of skeleton fish (Eubranchipus vernalis). The clucking frog and peepers very lively. 11 Another meadowlark to-day. The past hard winter has evidently been very hard on these birds, very disastrous. They are late coming, and very scarce. A bright dry warm day. 12 Snow to-day, soft and moist. Snow all day. 13 Rain, rain. 14 First dog tooth violet to-day and first willow bloom. 15 First hepatica in the woods, near ice house -- sweet-scented. 6 Saturday. Home to-day with wife and Julian. Huge snow banks in the roads and woods -- have to drive through the fields in getting down to Abigails. 17 Boiled sap to-day in the woods with Hi Corbin; enjoyed it hugely. In Chases sap bush found the hepatica in bloom within a few feet of a huge snow bank; no yellow violets to be seen yet. 18 Back home to day. 19 To N.Y. and thence to New Haven. 21 A long walk with Mrs. Booth and Prof. Munger out to Woodbridge. A bright lovely April day. Found arbutus, blood root, hepatica, erythronium, and heard and saw the first swallow. My first real excursion into Connecticut, my ancestral state. 22 Back home to-night at 7 P.M.. 24 Sunday. The warmest day of the season. 80 in the shade, with wind S.W. A walk back in the woods; found arbutus, dicentra, blood-root, hepatica, adder-tongue, and on the river bank near Sherwoods anemone and chickweed. Domonie Sherman died today and also Pat Masters and Elias Elmendorf. Two [crossed out cock] hen robins fight for 3/4 of an hour on the grass in front of the house; never saw so fierce a battle; they made the feathers fly; they panted like game cooks; at it again the next morning as fiercely as ever. 27 Plenty of yellow violets to-day in the sugar bush and in other woods; also claytonia and addertongue in bloom. Saw honey-bees at work on claytonia. The hepatica acutiloba nearly all white and nearly all sweet scented this spring. Some very large ones 1 3/8 inches across. Often a single blossom is distinctly fragrant as that of the viola blanda. In bloom about a week before the yellow violet. May 1st. Came back to West Park to-day to look after skylarks. Marsh marigolds in bloom, shad trees in bloom, also apricot trees purple trillium in bloom. Father is well this spring and is fast ceasing to mourn openly for Mother. 4th Back to Roxbury today. 5 On the "Old Clump." Old snow banks yet in the woods here and there, the snow nearly as hard to melt as sand; granulated snow. Long and long I sat on the mountain top, and looked down upon the old familiar scenes. The black throated green backed warbler in the woods. 8 Sunday: back home to-day. 10 Liberated the sky larks to-day. The experiment evidently a failure. Very warm 86 in the shade. Fruit trees in bloom. Birds all here. On Saturday the 7th father went down to "church meeting." He had not been to the church before since Mother was buried. He was very anxious and even excited about going; began to lay his plans a week before hand. He shaved and dressed in the forenoon, and charged them many times to have his dinner ready early and the horse fed and harnessed. It seemed almost as if he expected to see Mother instead of her grave. He was full of eagerness and of a sad vague expectation. He started about 1 o'clock, and was back by six. The day was warm and fine. He complained sadly of the neglected condition of Mother's grave, and charged Hiram to go and fix it up. On Sunday he went again to meeting. He also talked much about the death of Elder Beebe, and was much grieved by it. He has taken the Elders Signs of the Times ever since I can remember. Grand father Burroughs had an uncle Stephen Burroughs who lived in Bridgeport Ct. and who could build a ship and sail it around the world, father said. He lost a beloved son at sea, and event that nearly broke his heart. Ship, cargo, and son were all his, and were all lost. 11 Very hot -- Julian said the robins called him to come up in the clouds. He said some day he was going up in the clouds to sit down. He seems to think the clouds are a kind of woods. 12 92 in the shade. Foliage all out. 13 Found orchis spectabalis in bloom to-day. 22 A week of cloud and rain, the liquid shady side of May following a long dry spell. A walk to the woods with Hazen -- overtaken by a shower. 23 Dissolving weather; where two or three clouds are gathered together, it rains. It is water-affirmative, as Goethe says, The spirit of rain is abroad. After supper looking skyward I saw what I never saw before -- a flock of birds or fowls very high, so high I could not make out what they were, tho' ducks were suggested, going north ward in Indian file, making a long fine wavering black line against the clouds. As they went on with great speed, swaying a little this way and that, they suggested a long slender worm or snake, an aerial serpent. I watched them till they became a mere thread and that faded out in the distant sky. They were at an immense hight. [crossed out: What were they?] as if launched for Hudson's Bay. No where short of Canada will that arrow fall, and it must have been shot from the Gulf. What were they? (Swans.) On the way to Po'keepsie noticed that some wet poorish meadows were covered with the wild geranium -- a pinkish tinge over the grass. It makes a very pretty field flower. Saw a weasel come down a tree and cross the road to the fence; then run up another tree nimbly as a squirrel, and down again; then along the top of the wall with great speed. 26 On my way to the P.O. discovered that the hive-bee is dependent upon the bumble-bee for the honey it gets out of the blossoms of the locust. The bumble-bee bites into or pierces the flower at its shank and takes [crossed out: a sn] the first snack; then the honey bee comes along, searches for the hole and takes what is left. Neither bee makes any attempt to get at the sweet the regular way, that is, by the mouth of the corolla. It is singular that the columbine with its "horn of honey" is not rifled in the same way; but it is not, tho' the dicentra is. 30 First wild strawberries today; gathered them in Frothinghams field, and brought them home in a cornucopia of burdock leaves; thought of mother constantly, of the days and days she had spent in the summer fields picking strawberries, me with her as a boy and as a man; the heat, the fatigue, and her figure moving slowly toward home with her pail or basket filled. 1881 June 2d Home to-day. Father well and hearty. 3 Started on the old round over the mountains to examine the banks: Eden with me. Weather cool and fair Crossed Palmer Hill again about 4 P.M. 5 In the old hemlocks to-day, found the nest of the black throated-blue-back warbler, in a low bush -- 4 eggs. 6 Over to Batavia kill with father fishing -- clear, cold day. Father full of remeniscences and of talk about mother: told of the first time he ever saw her, etc. This was the road to Red Kill which they had traveled together so many times! [a line suggests that the following passage should come at the end of the entry for June 3 above] When Eden and I came back from the banks we passed mothers grave about 6 1/2 P.M. We paused and gazed silently upon it. I shall never forget the emotion it gave me to see that grave there where no new grave had been for so many years! Mother, mother, seemed to fill the air above it. Oh, can it be possible I thought, that she who gave me life, and who was so precious and real to me but a few months ago, lies there beneath that mound. The last time she [crossed out: was] ever [crossed out: in the b] visited the burying-ground I was with her. It was in August, a few weeks before her stroke. 11 Rain, rain, rain, Nature in a rut again. 5 days of rain and drizzle. 28 A disgust of rain. Not in years have I seen so wet a June. Farmers can't hoe their corn shower after shower till the earth is full of water. My well is within a few feet of the top. The streams like April. 29 Saw three weasels (Ermines) back of the hill along a stone wall. They were hunting for eggs and young birds and went up a tree and explored its branches. persued and abused by a brown-thrasher. Saw a slight frost the 21st up Dry Brook to Smith's. July 2 When President Garfield was shot I was fishing on Auchmoodies Pond with Ames and Northrup and did not hear the news till we returned at 5 1/2 P.M. In the P.O. as I inquired for my mail they said the President had been shot last night in Baltimore. I drove home much excited and at 7 o 'clock saw the particulars in a Troy paper that Amanda brought. 4 A sad Fourth; much depressed by the shooting of Garfield. Whether he lives or dies the event will be productive of incalculable in jury. Great crimes are sure to repeat themselves; other presidents will be shot in the future, either by mad men or by assassins. We shall probably have an epidemic of shooting at once. When a thing has been done once it is much easier to do it a second time. The pent up madness and villany will now set towards this new vent -- shooting distinguished men. 8 The clouds lift -- the President may pull through. One of the heaviest rains last night I ever knew --. about 6 inches of water fell. 10 Old Mr Martin down at the dock told me this anecdote about Si Terpenning -- a fellow not very well stocked with brains. He was hoeing corn for Mr. So and So, who told him to leave only four stalks in a hill -- all others was to be pulled out. When in the course of the day Mr. So and So came into the field he found indeed only 4 stalks in the hill but they were the smallest -- all the biggest had been pulled out. "That is the way to do it" said Si in explanation "pull out the big ones and give the little ones a chance." "There is a great deal of that kind of philosophy in this world," said old Mr. Martin [crossed out: e], reflectively. 12 Mid-summer approaches. I begin to hear the bobolinks "pip" in the air above -- the young birds are fledged and both old and young will soon begin to move southward. The meadows lilies spot the meadows with fire; the rye is golden on the hills; wild clematis just beginning to bloom; the smooth sumac (R. glabra) in bloom and yielding apparently much honey to the bee; the chestnut trees full of their yellow-white plumes and filling the air with their peculiar soapy smell; the linden's sweet breath is on the air; wild roses still linger, and what is unusual at this season, the earth is full and overflowing with water as in spring. So much rain I have seldom seen in summer. 1881 July 17 Start for home in buggy. Lark with me. 18 Reach home to-day about noon. Stay home with wife and Julian. Father well and hearty. I work much in the hay field. Aug 9 Drive to Furlow Lake today and prepare camp. 10 Wife and Julian and Gilder and family join me and Lark to-day. We remain in camp till Friday the 19th when I carry Julian who is sick, out in a pouring rain. Much alarmed about the dear boy, but in a few days he is better. The camping out experiment not entirely satisfactory. It is a mistake to take ones family to the woods. They stand between you and the wild nature you are after, and between you and your male companions. Gilder and I could not, or did not, get at each other. We had no intimacy, no comradeship, no talks. Leave the women at home next time. The camp is for men alone. 27 Start back home to-day. Dry hazy and hot. Reach Olive at night and spend Sunday there where wife and Julian arrive in advance of me. 29 Came on home to-day. In Kingston lose Lark. He goes back to Olive, 10 miles where we spent Sunday arriving there next day, tired, dusty, and forlorn, poor dog! 1881 Sept 20 The Presidents death oppresses me like a personal bereavement. Mr. and Mrs. Brookman brought me the news this morning. I was coming up the hill with my hat full of peaches. When I saw the paper in their hands with its broad black lines I knew the dreadful tidings. Never perhaps since the world began was the death of one man so widely and sincerely lamented. The last time I saw and heard Garfield was in April 1879 in the House of Reps. His speech was the most earnest eloquent and impressive I ever heard in that hall. 21 We go down to Ocean Grove and spend one week by the sea. The beach attracts me much. Its purity, its odor, its elemental wildness, its rustling liquid drapery, the great white lace-like spreads which it is forever throwing and forever withdrawing from the smooth face or breast of the sand, etc. I never tired of it. Day after day I walk for miles on the beach, bare-foot, skirting the thin edge of the waves, alone, soliloquizing with the soliloquizing sea. Julian shovels and plays in the sand by the bathing pavilions for hours and hours, hoarding every shell or fragment of shell or smooth pebble as a great treasure. Oh, restless ocean when thou art finally stilled I suspect death will have claimed all earthly things. 28th Back home to-night, and much distressed by the sore illness of my dog Lark, from the bite of a large Newfoundland dog. 1881 Sept 30 My dear dog Lark died to-day. I sat by him the last two hours of his 1ife. So he too, is already of the past! Oh greedy and remorseless past, not even is ones dog safe from your all-devouring maw. This was (ah that fatal was) my third dog, and the most tender and affectionate of them all. Dog of the gentle heart! more a child than a dog! how much have I buried in the grave with thee! How can I again resume my walks through the old lanes and by-paths and wood roads [crossed out: without] where we have strolled together for 4 years past, summer and winter, without thy gentle comradeship? All the landscape for miles and miles we have read over and over to-gether as two boys read a story book. No forest way or nook or retreat but knew us many times. The "Idyl of the Honey-Bee" was thine as well as mine. The "Notes of a Walker" were thy notes as well. It seems as if I could almost give my right hand to have thee back! A vital part of me is gone, something that knitted us to the fields and woods and that made life more sweet. Lark was always child-like -- not puppyish, but like a proud and pampered child. He could not stand even the look of anger from me. Let me approach him any time or place and look sternly at him and he would throw himself upon his back and put up his little red feet supplicatingly. There was no blame he would not take upon himself and humbly beg forgiveness for. He had no prowess, no courage, could hardly kill a squirrel unaided, yet how I treasured him in my heart. How pathetic now seem his wanderings with his faint, but yearning human and sagacious heart. When I lost him in Kingston on my return from Roxbury, and he made his way back, ten miles to Father Norths in Olive where, I spent Sunday, and where we had left wife and Julian! What trepidation, what bewilderment had he not suffered! The hostile dogs, the hooting boys, the threatening cattle, and the long dusty tedious way? If I knew where he passed the night, or where he rested by day I think I would go there just to gaze upon the spot. The dry leaves upon which he made his bed and where he renewed his resolution not to be discouraged or to give up the search for me, would be precious to my eyes. One's pleasure with a dog is unmixed. There are no set-backs. They make no demands upon you as does a child; no care, no interruption, no intrusion. If you are busy, or want to sleep or read, or be with your friend, they are as if they were not. When you want them there they are at your elbow and ready for any enterprise. And the measure of your love they always return heaped up. Ah. well. I cannot help but mourn. My daily companion and comrade is gone. The door that opens and shuts but once to dogs as well as to men, has closed behind him and I shall see him no more, no more. I buried him at the north end of the rock where my other dogs lie. In the afternoon I dug his grave, and in the twilight buried him, Julian looking on the only mourner. Oct 1st Still very hot, therm 90 in the shade. A hot dry Sept. heat and haze and smoke and drought since Aug 24th -- the hottest month of the season. Oct 2 Rain and gloom to-day. I cannot make Julian show or feel any regret for Lark. He says he does not want him back because he was bit so bad and is dead. Another time he said "Poppy, why don't you have God come down out of the clouds and make another Lark?" 5 Thermometer down to freezing this morning -- a fall of nearly 50 degrees since yesterday forenoon. While I was home in August Ezra Bartram, of whose mother father bought the farm, and of whom I had often and often heard father speak, came out from Michigan to visit the friends and scenes of his youth. He had been gone 52 years and was now 75. I was glad to see him. He had worked and played on the farm as a boy and his parents lie buried upon the hill. He went out beyond the hog-pen to look for a stone he had marked with his axe just before he left. But the road and all was changed and he could not find it. In the barn he said I would find the print of a mans bare foot on one of the boards under the shingle near the peak. When his mother was building it, an indolent fellow whose name he told, came along and walked on the board as it lay by the rode side and left his mark. But I could not find the print. How strange to come back to the place of one's youth, after an absence of more than a half a century! To me, how much had passed there since he left. In Michigan he took up a farm in the wilderness and began at the stump. In the still autumn mornings, he said, they could hear the wild turkeys calling and gobbling in the edge of the forest all about them. Venison was their staple meat. [crossed out: When a man] Some one in the neighborhood would kill a deer every week and divide it up among his neighbors. The great trees were felled and burned in heaps. It was amusing to hear him tell about a famous yoke of oxen he had in those early days; they would draw any log he hitched them to. When they found they had their match, he said they would give their tails a kink, lift up their heads and go eh-h-h-h, then something had to come. He spoke of them with great affection. He said they lost their first six children each at the age of about two years, or in teething time. Fever and ague would seize them during this critical period and so reduce them that they could not pull through. As the country got cleared up and improved the ague abated, and their next six children survived. The poor babies; pioneer babies, how ones heart yearns for them! Ezra is a great talker and is very jovial and entertaining. Two old men who had been boys together, and who had met after more than 50 years had elapsed, father and Ezra Bartram -- parting for the last time on the street. I sat in the wagon near by. Ezra shakes fathers hand again and again; leaves him and returns to him and says "In 20 years I shall come again" "I shall be under the sod long before that," replies father presses his hand again, puts his other on his shoulder, half embracing him, looks steadily into fathers eyes for a moment, says "God bless you, Chancy" and they part, these school boys of 60 years ago, never to meet again in this world. Speaking of Wilson in late years I had often heard Mother remark that he used frequently to say to her that he wished he could see all the bread she had ever made piled in a heap. "Poor boy" said Mother if he could see all I have made since he has been dead he would see a big pile." 1881 Oct 8 Go home this morning. Reached home about noon. Father came down the steps to meet me. He is well and hearty. In the afternoon he and I go down to Abigails in the wagon. 9 On the Old Clump to-day and back to the cleared fields. Saw many yellow bellied wood peckers. A cool cloudy day. 10 Back home this morning. 22 Drove across Dutchess Co. from Benton's whither I went on the 19th; a soft, nearly clear October day full of color and full of a sense of the coming sleep of things. Nov. 10 A bright mild delightful November day. Finished the Po'keepsie banks yesterday. 25 A bright clear day -- Snow on the ground. All alone in the house since last Saturday, wife and Julian in Troy. How many days and nights of solitary confinement have I spent in this house! The sad, sad thoughts and remembrances how they find one out and prey upon him in solitude! Dec. The dog is a slow walker. 15 To P. to look after a defalcation in the Po'keepsie Nat Bk. Finished my article on the bank question for The Century last night; ink was hardly dry on last pages when I was ordered to P. 18 Sunday -- A clear Indian summer day: thermometer 50 bees out of hive. a day like October. You can have no flame till you first have gas or vapor. 1881 Dec 19 Home to-day, the same as one year ago, to be present at Father's birth-day, his 79th. A warm soft day. Homer and the hired man met me at the depot: reached home about 8 o'clock. Father came down on the steps in the darkness, listening for my voice; he is glad to see me. Mary Jane and her girl, Ursula, present. 20 Still bright and mild. As I was working up in the shop, getting out shelves for my new study, father came up at 10 1/2 o'clock and with choking voice said the hour had just arrived at which Mother died one year ago. I paused in my work, silent and sad. At dinner all the family were present -- all the living. Father, Eden, Hiram, Curtis, myself, Abigail, Jane. Father is well, and eats and sleep as usual. In the afternoon, Abigail, Jane, and Hiram went down to Mothers grave. In the evening Father told again of the man he saw hung in Delhi when he was a boy. The people all turned out, far and near to see the hanging. It was better than a circus and drew immensely. There was a tremendous crowd. Grand father and Grand mother and several of their children went. When the man swung off Aunt Mary, then about 17 or 18, fainted dead away and dropped to the ground. 21 Still, warm and bright. Go hunting foxes up on the mountain. But little snow in the wood. Saw where a wood pecker, perhaps the hairy, had just excavated a [crossed out: dry] snuggery in a dry tree. His new chips strewed the snow. Saw two 'coon tracks and followed them a long way down the side of the mountain. Chipmunks lively yet. No foxes, but a good tramp. Back home in the afternoon. 1882 Jany 1 Rain Rain, the ground is overflowing. No frost in the ground, no winter yet, not a particle of ice in the river; the grass still green. 5 Cold for the past three days, down to zero this morning. Ice beginning to form on the river. The earth bare and frozen like a rock. 5 The first day in my new Study; moved in yesterday. My books in their new places last night. I contemplated them with a strange, sad feeling, my faithful, silent companions! 11 Soft and mild for 3 days past. Snow last night for the first in several weeks. Large fields of thin, slowly moving ice in the river. A remarkably mild winter no far. 13 The universe, eternity, the Infinite, is typified by the sphere: the earth is the symbol of the all, of the riddle of riddles. We speak of the ends of the earth, but the earth has no ends. In a sphere every point is a centre, and every point is the highest point, and this explains the puzzle of time and space. There never was a beginning of time and there never will be an end. Time always is. Any number of trillions of years hence, and any number of trillions or quadrillions of years past, and you are just as near the end or the beginning of time as now and no nearer. This moment is the centre of time; this instant is the highest point in the revolving sphere. The same with that other form of time, Space. There is no end to Space and no beginning. This point where you now stand, this chair, this tree, is the center of Space: it all balances from this point. Go to the farthest fixed star and make that distance but the unit one in millions and sextillions of such distances, and you have only arrived at Here. Your own door step is just as near the limit and no nearer. This is the puzzle of puzzles, but it is so. We cannot understand it, but then we can see why we cannot understand it. 13 Birds, not of a feather, flock together, in winter. There has just passed my door a loose, rambling, heterogeneous troop of birds foraging after the snow; snow birds, Canada sparrows, and gold finches on the ground, and kinglets and nuthatches in the trees above -- all drifting in the one direction; the snow birds and sparrows closely associated, and the other birds rather dissociated. Misfortune, or hard times, makes all the world akin. A Noahs ark, with all species living on friendly terms, is not an improbable circumstance in such a rain. The birds I have just alluded to were probably not drawn together by any special social ties, but all were engaged in the same general hunt for food, and the activity of one species attracted or excited that of another. "I will look that way, too" said the kinglet and the nuthatch, when they saw the other birds apparently getting their fill. 17 To Sister Jane's to-night on my way to Stamford to examine the new bank. 18 Pretty cold. Homer took me up to examine the bank. 19 Home to father's this morning on the early train. Hiram met me at the depot. Father was in tears when I entered the house; he could hardly speak, he was so glad to see me. He is better but coughs up a great deal of phlegm yet. He eats and sleeps well, but mourns for Mother more than usual, perhaps because he is so closely confined to the house. He asked me twice as he did before when I was home, if I thought mother had changed much in her grave. I saw that he did not want to believe that she had changed. He said the soil was dry and sandy. Father sleeps alone back there in that hall-bedroom -- a most dismal place. I could hear him cough up in the chamber where I slept. I looked in upon him night and morning lying there alone. A little while and he too will be gone. Those splint-bottom kitchen chairs, he said, he got of old Mr Carroll, Enos Carrolls father, when he and Mother first went to keeping house. He brought them home on horse back. When I left for home next morning, his tears flowed afresh. All great poems and works of art have the quality of the broad day light. We may not always understand them, yet the mind sees clearly. But in much poetry (in Rosettis) there is somewhat murky and foggy, an opaque hindering something mingles with and enfeebles the light It is said that the Chinese have never made a barrel. The barrel is a good measure of civilization. To find a mole above ground is as rare occurrence then to catch a weasel asleep, yet one May day, walking through the fields, I surprised a mole on the surface. Feb 1 A heavy snow yesterday and last night. 18 inches on the level. 4 Another heavy snowstorm from the north -- 14 inches, very light. Snow leg deep everywhere. 13 Myron Benton left for home to-day. Came here on Wednesday. I met him in P. Much talk down in my little house and trying of our teeth as usual. upon the old uncrackable nuts. The logico-metaphysical lines in Myron's mind much stronger and deeper than in my own. The inward eye of his mind is very clear. 27 Julian just now asked, "How many hours you have to wait to go way across the ocean" A suggestion of spring this morning. Clear and soft and hazy. The blue-bird (here all winter) has the amerous warble of spring. The purple finches sitting in all the apple trees indulged in fine, half suppressed chorus song; it was very pleasing. My little wood pecker has not begun to drum yet. A hard snow covers the ground. Ice men began to put in poor, 6 inch ice on Saturday, in front of me. A sun-dog las yesterday afternoon; and a soft rosy glow diffused over the clouds [crossed out: thi] at sunrise this morning, reaching nearly to the zenith -- Do those signs indicate fair weather? First chipmunk to-day, back on Mannings ridge. 28 Fair and spring like. The first sparrow song this morning before sunrise. My little wood pecker began his drumming about 7 o'clock at the old stand. His first notes were uncertain and at long intervals; but presently he warmed up and at 7 1/2 was beating a lively tattoo. The hawks (hen hawks) screaming to-day and circling about each other, high in air. It is their mating season. 1882 March 1st A steady, heavy rain from the south with much fog -- the fog the result probably of the snow on the ground and the ice on the river. 3 P.M. a day of powerful rain, threatens a flood. Had my hair cut yesterday, felt weakened and reduced in vitality in the afternoon -- Wonder if the old myth about Samson and his locks is true after all. and that we lose our strength when our hair is cut? Finished my [crossed out: "Observations of Nature"] "Signs and Seasons" to-day, begun two weeks ago. Writing is like fishing, you do not know that there are fish in the hole till you have caught them. I did not know there was an article in me on this subject till I fished it out. I tried many times before I had a bite, and I done much better some days than others. Stormy days, either snow or rain (tho' snow is best, ) were my best days. I did not know I had that bank article in me till Gilder told me I had and commanded me to write. The same is true of the Thoreau article, and indeed of nearly all my articles; they have been discoveries and have surprised me. 2 Ice broke up last night. River strewn with the wreck of winters domains this morning. Great flocks of herring-gulls on their way up river to see what they can find. The muskrats built unusually high houses last fall but yesterday rain submerged them all but three (there were 7 in all). Ice ran down all day: the flood in the river overpowered the tide and pushed it back. No cake of ice has returned. A high hole to-day, and back of the hill several little pipers probably newts as they did not sound like the hyla. Some in the swamp, filled with ice, snow and water, and some in the woods. At 3 P.M. comes a dispatch from home that Hiram Corbin lay at the point of death. my spring thus nipped in the bud. A deep gloom suddenly covers everything. 3 Today I go home, doubtless to find Hiram dead, the corpse of a dear and beloved friend at the threshhold of spring. A typical spring morning, still motionless dissolving. The air full of blue bird notes and the calls and warbles of the purple finch. The river and the landscape veiled with a soft, vapery haze; the sky flecked with summer clouds. At sunrise an unusual sight in the east. A heavy bank of black cloud lay low on the horizon just when the sun was to come up. Against a saffron sky this cloud rose up like a mountain. Presently its outline began to glow. Some god took a brand from the sun and limned it upon the sky. The effect was precisely that of an arrested chain of lightning. Conceive the vivid zig-zag flash that lays open the clouds of a summer shower, caught and pinned fast upon the sky and you have this phenomenon. It was a mere line, jagged, intense that shot up from the horizon on the one hand and described a zig-zag course a few degrees above it and then plunged down. From beyond this the sun sent up great broad bands or radii of light, the cloud in the meantime keeping its somber, blue-black appearance. 10 A.M. The wind has just sprung up and like magic the vapor, the haze, the enchantment is dispelled; the river is rumpled and made to show its dirty hue. Afternoon very windy, night windy also. 4 Reached home about dark last night. Hiram Corbin died in the morning about 5:40. To-day very windy with strong light all around the horizon. Go over in Hirams sap bush in the morning after looking upon his dead form, and muse about the woods where he has spent so many days How the wind roars over the trees, swaying them this way and that. A good sap day. The snow all gone. No wild flowers yet. 5 Sunday. To-day poor Hiram is to be buried. A storm seems to be approaching. At 10 o'clock a strange phenomenon about the sun, 4 sun dogs of great brightness thus [drawing with the following labels] 1 a bright crown to the circle about the sun 2 and 3 sections of rainbows 4 a mass of soft light. I go over again in Hirams sap bush and sit long and long amid the trees. The owls hoot dismally in the hemlocks, the crows caw loudly; all portends a great storm. The woods full of red headed wood-peckers, probably a dozen in the sap-bush; hear of them in other low woods; doubtless the beech nuts attract them. Elder Hewitt preaches in the afternoon a rambling incoherent sermon over the poor boys remains. He is buried beside his mother who died in 1859. The last time I saw him in life was Dec 21 when we all went hunting up on the mountain. Hiram stopped by the big rock in the woods where the fox usually crosses, and said he would stay there while Jim and I moved on. There, standing beside the rock in the winter woods, is the last glimpse I had of him. He was a generous hearty man, open of heart and open of hand. Many a camp and tramp have we had together, and now he has lain down for the last time. 6 Back home to-day. The storm proves but light. The ominous owls and sun dogs of little account after all. Left father well. 8 Day of great lightness and clearness, cold wind from the East. Predict snow for to-morrow. 9 Morning dawned with deep blood red in the east very early. Snow storm set in at 8 A.M. Brilliant aurora last night. 12 First red shouldered starling this morning, which told me it was time for the skunk-cabbage to blossom. In my walk found the ground about the head of Hibbards pond studded with them; probably out yesterday. Heard the first partridge drum also near Ackers. The pussy-willows showing their pearly buttons. The only new observation of my walk was the angularity of the branchings of the hickory thus [drawing] Yesterday observed that the fruit of the bitter-sweet that looks so like a flower has a fine perfume, suggesting arbutus and violets, thus in a double sense, it is like a flower. After the snow storm the other day I noticed wherever the snow lay unmelted upon the ponds and pools these curious spider-shaped marks [drawing] little and big everywhere and quite uniform in shape. The most rain and high water the past winter I ever knew. Great floods in the West and along the Miss. causing incalculable suffering and loss. 12 Turtle dove today. Mch 17 Advice to a young writer and to myself: Come to the point at once, and if what you are trying to say has no point, don't say it. 19 Phoebe here this morning. April 3 My 45th birth day. Clear crisp and delightful. All day in the old sap bush at home boiling sap. Father, Julian, and Hiram there much of the time. How delighted I am again amid the old scenes and at the old occupations. Now on my 45th birthday my hair is about half gray, beard ditto; mustache unchanged, except on close inspection, where three or four small gray hairs appear. Health good, [crossed out: but] and much of a boy yet at heart, but the boy is growing more and more sad with longer and more frequent retrospection. Indeed the past begins to grow at my back like a great pack, and it seems as if it would overwhelm me quite before I get to be really an old man. As time passes, the world becomes more and more a Gethsemane, a place of graves, even if [crossed out: I] one do not actually lose by death his friends and kindred. The days do not merely pass, we bury them; they are of us, like us, and in them we bury our own image, a real part of ourselves. With what longing and regret we look back athwart this cemetery of the years where our days, many of them so beautiful and happy and bright, lie hushed and still. They cannot rise, they cannot come back to us; they were the offspring of our loins. Many of them we have entirely forgotten the look and aspect of; we cannot recall what they were like, and [crossed out: etc., etc.] this makes us sad. Occasionally a word, a forgotten tune or air, or a perfume brings [crossed out: comes to one] back for a moment the buried past, and a mournful thrill goes through the soul. 4th Went a fishing along the old stream in the West Settlement; bright and really April weather; caught no fish, but caught many memories of other days. 6 No wild flowers yet. Back home to-day after nearly two weeks absence. Father well and hearty as usual. I tried to get him to go over to see grand fathers house with me, but he would not; he said it he said it would only make him feel sad. He talked daily about mother and mourned for her. Old Hayes used to live there below grand fathers; he moved to Ohio. 14 Found arbutus and disentra just beginning to bloom on the western slopes; liverwort not yet in bloom in the same locality. Have actually secured passage to England for us all, to sail May 6. A spring so far of very low temperature -- not one warm day -- thermometer seldom above 40 -- often below 30. 17 On this day the claytonia was found in bloom by Ed in the sap-bush. 19 Today claytonia abundant in the sap bush, and hepatica in bloom. Down in Chases sap-bush found plenty of hepatica and claytonia in bloom; no yellow violets there yet, but in Abigails sap bush found four yellow violets just piercing the mould; flower stalk an inch long, and flowers about half open, leaves rolled up. 20 To-day in a very favorable spot found yellow violets in our sap bush just up; the bud and the leaves seem to pierce the mould simultaneously; the rain of last night brought them up; warm for the past three days; they will be in bloom in about two warm days, making them about 4 or 5 days behind the claytonia; The first hepaticas pinkish white, and sweet scented. April 21 How surely a man is fast rooted in the age in which he lives. After 35 or 40 his interest is almost entirely in the past. He cannot move forward into the new generations and share their interests and hopes and prospects etc. The first effect of putting wood on the fire is to check the fire. 25 Cold dry hard April days, frost nearly every night. 26 Am writing on Carlyle and hitting the mark now and them. Just this moment my wife calls me to drop my Carlyle and come and shake the carpet a Carlylean task that makes one wrathful: I will whip the seam open! Apl 28 Emerson died last night at 8 1/2 o'clock. At that hour I was sitting with Benton in his house, talking of him and his probable death. With Emerson dead it seem folly to be a1ive. No man of just his type and quality has ever before appeared upon the earth. He looked like a god. That wise serene, pure inscrutable look was without a parallel in any human face I ever saw. Such an unimpeachable look! The subtle, half-defined smile of his face was the reflection of the smile of his soul. It was not a propitiatory smile or a [crossed out: smile] smirk of acquiescence, but the reassuring smile of the doctor when he takes out his lancet; it was the sheath of that trenchant blade of his. Behind it lurked some test question, or pregnant saying. It was the foil of his frank, unwounding wit, like Carlyles laugh. It was an arch, winning, half playful look, the expression of a soul that did not want to wound you, and yet that must speak the truth. And Emersons frank speech never did wound. It was so evident that it was not meant to wound and that it was so true to himself, that you treasured it as rare wisdom. 29 To Coxsackie to-day to the bank. Not very satisfactory. 30 Sunday. To-day Emerson is to be buried, and I am restless and full of self-reproach because I did not go to Concord. I should have been there. Emerson was my spiritual father in the strictest sense. It seems as if I owed nearly all or whatever I am to him. I caught the contagion of writing and of authorship before I knew his books, but I fell in with him just in time. His words were like the sunlight to my pale and tender genius which had fed on Johnson and Addison and poor Whipple. It is a bright clear, cool April day; the grass green, but no foliage, hardly buds on the trees yet, except on the elms, willows, and tamaracks. I must devote the day to meditating on Emerson, the greatest and most typical of all New Englanders. May 2 Snow flakes in the air to-day and yet the shad blows are out and the columbine nearly so. A whippoorwill to-night. The last night in my little hermitage before sailing. Every morning, if I have slept well, I am glad I am going, and every night I am sorry; thus does the day make and unmake us. To-night the old ties draw strongly, and I am sad. Aug 9 Sailed for Scotland May 6th. Arrived there May 17 at noon; good passage. Returning sailed from Glasgow [crossed out: May] July 28 at 5 P.M. Landed in N.Y. Aug 8 in morning; good passage. Reached home last night. Shall have many things to write about my trip. Aug 15 Wednesday. Home to-day. Very hot. Reached home at noon. Father badly afflicted with rheumatism; very glad to see me. Last night he says he watched for me till 8 o'clock, then went to bed much put out I did not come. He seems hearty, except this rheumatism. He said he dreamed of mother the other night, the room in which she was was colored like the rainbow and was filled with light. 17 Out to see Jane and Homer to-day. Eden with me. Weather cool and dry. 18 Stopped in Olive to-day to see Father North. Old man pretty feeble, tho' still active. Fell to sleep [crossed out:at the table] after dinner while we yet lingered at the table. Too lame to come and see me he says. 26 There is probably no truth whatever in the notion or theory that heavy canonading will shake up the air and shake out showers, because the present season, during the building of the West Shore R. Road, there have been incessant heavy explosions all along the Hudson, yet a drought began about July 5th and still continues, along this whole region. Aug 30 A clear warm dry day; the air filled with a soft, brooding, white haze. The shrill sounds of the locust every where. Excursion boats on the river. The moon at her full night before last. The last of the August days but one. Very dry. Am writing a little on my English impressions. Poor sleep last night --Julian coughing with a cold all night. Sep 1st Soft, misty, dissolving rain. Orioles calling or whistling as in May. The weather like May. a spider's web is a trap to every thing but a spider. The writings of Emerson and Thoreau drew readers to seek them personally. My books do not bring readers to me but send them to Nature. I take credit to myself on this account. I seek always to hold the mirror of my mind up to Nature that the reader may find her lineaments alone reflected there. I remember that this is one of the great merits of the "gentle Shakespeare"; himself you see not, only the great world compacted and idealized as in a Claude Lorraine mirror. Shakespeare I take it, was really a gentle spirit; who never obtruded himself, who made little impression upon those who knew him, so that the memory of him was quickly lost; far less as an egotist say than Ben Jonson and with less striking personality -- all his vast power working in a kind of impersonal way, -- just the contrary say of such a man as Carlyle. Sept 4 A little bird bathing in a tree hung with rain drops. How she rushes about among the foliage that clothes the long sprays, and dips and flutters, and receives the mimic showers on her half spread wings. A morning bath in the bejewelled trees. 6 Daily Julian plies me with all sorts of puzzling questions. "Papa, where is the end of the road." "Papa, how would you like to be over made (made over) and [crossed out: fixed nicer fixed?"] "How would you like to have sixty thousand hands" "How would you like to people in a pipe when water comes through." "How would you like to live with a elfunt" (elephant) etc. etc "What would you do if a whale swallowed you." "What would you do if I drowned myself." etc. "What would you do if you had to make bread and work?" What a singular intellectual quality Beecher has! watery, dropsical, inflated when tried by the highest standards; wonderfully copious and seemingly original, but seldom touching just the right spot in just the right way. 12 Heavy rain all day yesterday and last night, a soaker. The 25th anniversary of our marriage. Wife asked me if I remembered that we were married 25 years ago to-day. I said no, I had forgotten it like many other of my youthful follies. No sleeper is disturbed by his own snoring. Every day, when Mother visited me here, would she watch for the passage of that one o'clock train that carried Eden and Walker to Channy B's dying bed side in Brooklyn [crossed out: in] May 1874. It seemed to have a sad, strange interest to her. She would gaze after it long and wistfully, tho' perhaps not one car was the same as bore them. But she knew it not. No other train had such significance to her as that. I find the same trait strong in myself. 23 The second day of a terrible almost unprecedented rain. Yesterday 6 inches of water fell, and to-day since 10 1/2 o'clock it has been pouring in the same way -- wind North N.E. A sort of a monster universal thunder storm. The thunder at no time seems near or violent, but as if it was general, very deliberate and composed. This will strengthen and keep alive the belief in the Equinoxal storm for a hundred years, unsupported by another coincidence. I do not remember ever to have seen two days of such rain and the days so dark. Thunder at intervals both days. Had the ground not been rather dry a terrible flood would ensue. Nearly one foot of rain in the two days -- 6 inches yesterday, over 5 in. to-day, and perhaps one or two on Thursday -- In parts of New Jersey the fall was 17 inches! The storm came up the coast and went on through Maine; was about 150 miles wide. 28 Four years ago to-day mother left here for the last time. I can see her as she walked up across the grass from our house to Emmas to put on her things. She was weeping. That night before too in the kitchen, when she talked about things of long ago. Elder Jim Meade etc., how it all comes back. I was sitting by the window holding the baby, and she was standing or sitting near the clock. Dear little Lizzie Bennett was there too, but wife was morose and silent [October] 4 Go out home to-day with wife and Julian, a bright, lovely day. At the crossing near Roxbury village a first class American rail-road crossing tragedy. A wagon with a man and two women struck by the flying train and smashed to pieces. One woman killed, and the other woman and her husband about the same as killed. Such a terrible calamity, wreck and ruin and death, and not a passenger on the train knew that anything had happened [crossed out: till] or felt any shock, till the train began to slacken and came to a standstill. The only unusual sound I heard was something like a limb raking [crossed out: f] lightly along the bottom of the car. The train backed up and there lay a few feet to one side, the fragments of a wagon piled upon the body of a motionless horse; the other horse was rushing wildly about the fields with part of the harness hanging to him. We looked again and there lay the body of a woman upon her back, her face and hair besmeared with blood; then the body of a man in the same position and state; then thirty feet away the body of another woman, ditto. Her pulse fluttered, but her staring eyes were fixed in death. Not a groan, not a sound not a movement in this scene of ruin and death. The womans scalp was torn completely from her head and fell back like a night cap; the man was cut in the head also; both were breathing heavily and bleeding profusely. We lifted them into the car and hastened to the station. It seems the team got beyond control of the drivers as the train came up in their rear and literally ran into the engine, striking it on the side as it was crossing the highway. What a sight for the engineer to witness! Reached home about 12 1/2 P.M. Father pretty feeble with rheumatism and general debility. In the afternoon Julian and I go on the hill where the boys are cutting the corn, Eden, Curtis, Hi K., and Ed [EBK: sons of Curtis]. It calls up old times. 5 To day I drive over to Delhi and examine the bank and then to Andes. The tints of autumn spot the woods. The sumac burns like fire. By the woods the cool smell of the blooming witch hazel in the air. 6 To day I pause by Mothers grave. 7 On the mountain with Eden and Willie to-day with the hound, very fair and warm; the woods delightful. 8 To day father and I walk up on the hill. He is quite feeble and his sun is fast setting; already the clouds and vapors of the low horizon begin to envelop it. I forgot to say that the first day we came, he and I also walked up the road to the orchard and stood and talked by the orchard bars. It touched me keenly in the evening when he said, on my speaking about the "Old Clump" that he had been to the "Old Clump" for the last time; he should go there no more. As boy and man, he had been there hundreds of times, tho' he and I were never there together. His last visit there was in the fall of 1879. He seems to have no fear or even dread of death, but speaks of it as one would of a distant journey he was contemplating. He said he wished to visit mothers grave once more -- As usual he had some anecdote about old Rove, the famous dog he owned early in his housekeeping days. The renown of old Rove for prowess, intelligence etc eclipses all subsequent dogs that have lived upon the farm. He was the Achilles among dogs. Father still remembers who laid the wall on this side of the orchard; it was John Simmons father. 1882 Oct 13 The muskrats are building their nests, began them probably about the 9th or 10th. No frost yet. Chestnuts falling without a frost, and leaves falling too. The pines -- white, yellow, red etc shed their old leaves this year in October --also the white cedars the same. A photographer in P. told me the light of autumn was not quick, the slowest of any season of the year. It was quicker even in the winter. In the fall there seems a predominance of yellow in the light, even on the most sharp and brilliant days. 28 A day of lustrous beauty. The maples are like great torches. Only two light frosts yet. 1882 Nov.27 Nov. a fine month; many Indian summer days -- Katydids musical till Nov. 1st. Had a picnic in the open air to cut a bee tree after elections. Thermometer 65. Our first considerable snow on the 25 -- fair sleighing yet. The winter is coming very gradually, but surely. A steady advance lately. Thirty years ago to-day my little sister Evaline died How strange becomes the habit of regarding ones parents as permanent, a part of the frame of things. I still have a strange, incredulous feeling when I think of mother as dead. [crossed out: She and father] And then I go home I do not seem to miss her as much as I ought; she is there still in the look of everything. She and father are so much a part of the place, or rather, everything was so much a part of them that to me they will both always be there; the house, the trees, the outbuildings, the roads, the fields, the furniture in the house, the air and look of the rooms, the distant hills and mountains, were all father and mother, and as long as these remain, they will remain. Nov 30 Clear and bright after two nights and one day of a driving snowstorm. The world white; the air motionless It is not so much what we see when we go to walk or go to distant countries, as what the things seem suggest to us. We all see about the same things; to one it suggests much, to another very little. When the writer goes to Nature, he does not get the material for his article; he only gets the seed corn for it; he grows the crop afterward. The facts he gets are only half -- they are less than half -- he must unfold or complete them out of his own heart. Dec 15 Snug, but not severe winter weather so far. During Sept. Nov. and thus far in December, have been writing up my English impressions, much more in me on the subject than I expected. 19 Started for home this day to be with fathher on his 80th birth day; am hindered by floating ice in the river and miss the 2 P.M. train. Pass the night in Rondout, a miserable night. Dec 20. A bright sharp [crossed out: day] morning with storm brewing -- a thaw, the weather report says. Reach home between 12 and 1 P.M. Hi K. meets me at depot, Eden gone hunting. Hiram over to Tom Smiths. Willie at school. Abigail meets me at the door. Father is lying down on the lounge. He rises weeping, as I enter the room; have never seen him so feeble tho' he is better than two weeks ago; has lost flesh since my last visit in October. He coughs and raises a great deal of phlegm -- left arm nearly useless from rheumatism. He weeps a great deal. cannot speak of anything serious without weeping; the faintest shade of emotion brings the tears. He talks feebler than usual and rarely indulges in a joke, unless they tease him about some woman, when he can still put all the proprieties to flight. He says he cannot bare to hear the fiddle now, tho' he was once very fond of it. His appetite is good enough and he sleeps very well. I could occasionally hear him cough in the stillness of the night. Father told me again about his uncle Channy Avery, who with his wife and family of seven children was drowned in Shandaken by the rise of the Esopus Creek, the 20th of April 1800 and perhaps 14 or 16. The creek rose rapidly in the night and retreat was cut off in the morning. Uncle Channy tried to fell a large tree and make a bridge, but the water drove him away. The house, which it seems was [crossed out: im] very imprudently placed on a tongue of land near the creek, was carried away with most of the family in it. His uncle swam to a stump with one little boy on his back there he stood till the water carried away the stump, when he again swam with his boy for shore, but a lot of drift wood engulfed him and all was over. Two of the children were never found. Their bones doubtless rest somewhere in the still waters of the lower Esopus. Father has seen where the family were buried. It is somewhere above Shandakan Centre. This uncle was his mother's brother. "Aint it wonderful" Father said, and repeated often, "that I have lived to be 80 years old; that the God of Heaven has spared my life so long. Yet I can say with the prophet "my days have been full of evil," and his tears flowed freely. 21 To-day I helped father down to the barn; he wanted to see if the boys were going to have hay enough. When he entered the barn I knew well what a flood of recollections and associations came over him. It was the old barn that stood there when he and mother came on the farm. Here he had kept his stock and thrashed and done his work all through his early and middle life. How familar was every beam and timber in it to him, and the mows of hay and the cattle were just as he had had them. He wept and said, "Oh if your mother could only have been spared to me in these last years." Everything that brought up the past centered at last in thought of her. In this barn Father always sheared his sheep and mother always plucked her geese. One time while we were shutting up the geese in early summer, we saw a man coming slowly along the road out on the "big hill". It proved to be uncle Charles Kelly, the only recollection I have of the old man. Homer and Mary Jane came to-day. Homer is quite a superior man in some ways; but he has no impartiality of mind -- no power to weigh or test evidence on any question beyond his own immediate experience. He refuses his assent to the most elementary principles of astronomy and geology and yet believes in witches! 22 To-day we all go down to Curtise's. Father and I ride side by side. After dinner I leave him. and take the train to Arkville. Go up and see Smith and Emma. and pass the night. A bad headache but much talk etc. 23 Reach home to-day at 1 P.M. Mrs. B. still refuses to talk. 25 A dull Christmas, but mild. 28 My poor horse shot today, a cripple since last Aug. from some strange and incurable injury t o her hip or thigh. A sad day to me. She was a noble animal and I was much attached to her. Last night I gave her hay for the last time and knew it was the last. Dick Martin did the bloody deed with his gun. With dogs horses I have the worst luck. Mrs. B in a towering rage, tho' she says she says she wanted Fanny killed months ago. When she saw me sharpening a knife to examine her hip with she said she felt like using it on my throat. Not long ago she said if she had strength enough she would kick me out of doors - How many days of my life, how many of my essays has the evil temper of that woman marred. [? She is capable of but two emotions - ? and tears.?]
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1884
Text: 1883 Nov. 9 In the light of Darwins theory it is almost appaling to think of ones self, of what he represents, of what he has come through. It almost makes one afraid of himself. Think of what there is inherent in his germ; think of the beings that lived, the savage lower forms, that he might move here, a reasonable being. At what a cost he has been purchased; a million years of unreason, for his moment of reason; a million years of gross selfishness, that he might have a benevolent throb. ...
Show more1883 Nov. 9 In the light of Darwins theory it is almost appaling to think of ones self, of what he represents, of what he has come through. It almost makes one afraid of himself. Think of what there is inherent in his germ; think of the beings that lived, the savage lower forms, that he might move here, a reasonable being. At what a cost he has been purchased; a million years of unreason, for his moment of reason; a million years of gross selfishness, that he might have a benevolent throb. "Bought with the blood of Christ" is the hyperbole of the Church; but every babe that is born today is bought with the blood of countless ages of barbarism, and countless lives of beings; and this not figuratively, but literally. Out of an ocean of darkness and savagery, is distilled this drop of human blood, with all its possibilities. - Probably the most selfish creatures in the world are to be found among the childless women, - all the love, and sympathy and helpfulness, etc. that nature meant to flow out toward offspring, turned inward upon themselves. They come in time to look upon themselves as the child of themselves, which they pity and pet and caress and indulge and for whom nothing in this world is good enough. 12. Go home today to see Uncle Edmund Kelly, very cold and windy. Reach home at noon in a driving snow squall. Father opens the door before I reach it, and greets me with copious tears. Uncle Edmund sitting by the stove with his hat on. Find him but little changed, except more silent than he used to be. Sits long without remark, and reads the paper as an old man reads, that is appears to read it all; with equal interest, a want of interest doesn�t discriminate and select the news. Over 80 years old, the last of my uncles - all dead but him; very spry and quick for one so old; see grandfather very plainly in him; the look of Mother too and of Wilson. His favorite word an adjective is "monstrous", as "She was a monstrous smart woman," "it is monstrous cold," "she suffered monstrous" etc. etc. He told me of his old uncle John Kelly, grand father's brother, that he was a monstrous queer man, lived in the woods in a little hut a regular hermit life, people used to take him food to keep him from starving. When walking along the road he would stop and stand a long time and look all around (I feel the same trait in myself). Uncle Edmund used to go to his hut; as soon as near enough, he could hear him talking as if there were half a dozen persons there. He had two children "off toward Albany" who used to clothe him, and who finally kept him with them, and he died there. When a young man Uncle Edmund used to cut wood at the glass works in Woodstock during the winter; could cut and pick up 4 1/2 cords of stove wood in a day. He left for home Tuesday night: thinks he never will come again; I shall never see he and father together again; they parted that night just at sundown for the last time, Uncle Edmund with wet eyes and few words, father with copious tears and outspoken farewells - two men past 80, their wives dead, and nearly all their early friends and comrades in the grave. How wintery and desolate life did look to them both I know full well. Uncle Edmund had never before found mothers place vacant. He had been to the graves of all his Kindred on Red Kill, to his father and mothers and to all his brothers and sister's, as if to bid them a last farewell.- The old home was pretty desolate to me, only Hiram and Father left, now that Eden and Margaret have gone. Soon, soon it will be only Hiram. On Wednesday Hiram and I walk over the mountains, through wind and snow to Edens near Hobart. A hard long tramp. 17 A bright cold hard day, a day like polished iron. 19 A soft mild Indian summer day; sunlight weak, many times diluted with autumn shadows, but tender and dreamy. No thoughts in me; only a vague longing and unrest. - My best and truest friend among womankind, Mrs. Fanny A. Mead of Lansing, Mich., is dead, since Oct. 25th. Nearly all night Nov. 15th I lay awake thinking of her. In many ways the noblest, most loving, most discerning, most charitable woman I have known in this world. She visited me here the latter part of August 1880. Her death nearly blots out the West for me. - No matter how much learning, or force, or capacity of any kind [crossed out: you have] a man has a man has, unless he has that something which we call style - an apt and original expression and individual flavor of his own, he can make no permanent contribution to literature. Style is the precious spices etc. that embalm and keep thought. The iridescent hue of pearl is an effect of style - the manner of arrangement of the particles - not any new matter.27. A succession of remarkable sunsets and sunrises for several days past, culminating to-night in the most remarkable sky-glow, or sky bloom I ever saw. I have seen sunsets for over 40 years, and never saw one like that before; a cloudless sky flushing crimson that spread nearly up to the zenith and reached far around to the south east - and that an hour after the sun had actually set. At 6 o'clock the western sky was yet dark crimson. In many cities, in N.Y. and in Poughkeepsie, an alarm of fire was sounded and the fire companies were out to extinguish the sun set. The reflection of a distant fire upon a low clouded midnight sky, [crossed out: was] is not more marked than was this evening glow. The wonder was, [crossed out: such] the sky was cloudless the upper atmosphere itself seemed to turn to blood. 28. The same phenomenon again to night, only less pronounced. After sun-down a peculiar phosphorescent glow suffused the west; gradually a crimson bank formed far up from the horizon, which slowly crept down till it lay low in the west, and then near 6.P.M. dropped below the horizon. The mornings, too, have been exceptionally brilliant, the pale, phosphorescent glow of the east long before the sun appeared lighting up the world with the most peculiar effects. Dec. 1st Day of great brilliancy; still cloudless, cold. - The soul is not something superadded to the body, is it? [crossed out: It is] Is it not rather a growth and product of the body as much as the flower is of the plant - or the flame of the lamp? Growing as it grows and decaying as it decays? Dec. 6th Fine days and nights lately - a sort of sterner Indian summer - an austere, but serene Indian chief. Walking along the road in the bright Dec. quiet I pause and hear the fine rasping of squirrel teeth on a hickory nut, or butternut. New ice on the ponds, but the earth beneath is not thoroughly chilled yet, and it doesn�t last. The bluebirds and nuthatches discover a little owl at the bottom of a hollow in an apple tree below my study, and by their cries advertise to me [crossed out: of] the fact. I peep down and see the rascal with closed eyes, simulating sleep, but suspect he is watching me through those narrow slits. Dec. 9 [Section torn from the page] - People who try to explain Carlyle on the ground of his humble origin, shoot wide of the mark. "Merely a peasant with a glorified intellect, says one irate female. It seems to me he was the least of a peasant of any man of his time, a man of truly regal and dominatingpersonality. The two marks of the peasant, are stolidity and abjectness; he is dull and heavy and he dare not say his soul is his own. No man ever so hustled and jostled Kings and emperors about, and made them toe the mark as did Carlyle. It was not merely his intellect that was towering; it was his character, his will, his standard of morality - and of manhood. He is naturally imperious and haughty. There is no taint of the peasant in him, I remember well his long, slender soft hand, and can feel it yet in my own, a certain coarseness of fiber he had, as have all strong, first class characters, the fiber of the royal oak. [Pages missing?][crossed out: the ills of life] Arnold His vision leads his feeling; he sees first and feels afterward or tries to feel, not always with success. There is no struggle or conflict in him. He is not beaten back by contrary winds, nor carried swiftly and joyously ahead by fawning winds. He is calm and mildly contemptuous in a world of Philistines. Dec. 12 No snow yet, not much cold - no ice on the ponds. Peculiar, brilliant, phosphorescent sunsets and sunrises, with clouds at sunset of light olive green. How local, how circumscribed limited seems the sunset, and sun-rise - each a particular phenomenon confined to this one spot - a universal fact appearing as a special and particular fact. Much meaning in this. Thus the triumph of poetry, of art, is to house and locate the universal so, make the sun-rise and sunset special to you and me. The great universal facts of life and death appear peculiar and original to each one of us, but, behold, all men have the same experience. The rainbow is immediately in your front, spanning your own fields or native valley, but the man beyond the valley sees it spanning his just the same. Every man is a center of the world - all the facts of nature point to him, and he is bound to read them and to meet them from his own point of view. But it is well to remember that others have their point of view also, and that the clouds that appear so dull and leaden there in the south or north, are just as glowing in the sun set to people who see them from the right angle, as ours are here in the west. 13 Still bright and nearly clear, but chilly - the air full of a shining haze. The eastern skies all aglow again this morning - at one time a luminous crimson along the rim of the horizon that spread upward and suffused all the eastern skies with a peculiar phosphorescent light. 18 We speak of the motion of the heavenly bodies, but really this is not motion in the concrete as we know it upon the earth - it is rather motion in the abstract - a motion that is equivalent to eternal repose. See them bowl along there, without effort, without friction, without inertia or resistance overcome, changing their places with reference to each one an other, yet not changing their places in absolute space. Universal motion is equivalent to universal rest. When my boat moves with the tide it is practically at rest; if the shores moved too, then motion were abolished. There is no motion withoutplace, without a fixed point and in astronomic space there is no place, no fixed point, no up, no down, no over, no under. I expect we shall find out by and by that there is no waste or expenditure of heat by the sun in warming the solar system, as we understand it on earth, anymore than there is an expenditure of force in holding the earth in its place, and the other planets in theirs. It is something more subtle and transcendental than the warming of your house. The rays that go off into space probably carry no heat, itbecomes heat only when it is caught by the planets, which supply, as it were, the female principle. I am yet convinced that the sun is an actual burning or conflagration, though all that comes from it may be turned into heat upon the planets. (I can no more than hint the point I am driving at) 20 A cold day, four or five inches of snow upon the ground, first floating ice in the river, and clouds gathering for more snow. The third anniversary of mother's death, and father's 81st birthday, and I am not at the old place as is my wont, buthere in my ground-attic, writing on literature and science, with thoughts far away from home. From a letter to M.B.B [Myron B. Benton] We have all felt and spoken of the priestly and sacerdotal character of Emerson and have seen and felt his value to the spirit and that he was much more than a mere man of letters, but to say he has written the most important prose work of the 19th century, and yet that he is not a great writer, a great expressor, and that he is less in this respect than Addison, is absurd. If he is not a great man of letters, he is a great man speaking through letters, which is perhaps quite as important. His literary gifts were not an equipment that he could turn in any direction.He had no literary faculty that he carried about on his finger like a falcon, and with which he could hawk all manner of game from mice to pheasants, like Voltaire and Swift, but he had a power and at times a largeness of utterance, that these wretches never approached. You may say Bacon was not a great essayist, and yet the wisdom and learning of a great mind [crossed out: is] are revealed in his essays. Perhaps Arnold is correct. Not to be a mere writer, but man writing, would please Emerson best."Indeed the scientific critics like Taine leave a very large spot in my literary palate untouched. In literature, in history, we do not so much want things explained, as we want them portrayed and interpreted. And the explanation of these experts is usually only clever thimble rigging. If they ferret the mystery out of one hole they run it to cover in another. How clear is Taines explanation of those brilliant epochs in the history of nations, when they produce groups of great men and give birth to their great literatures. Why, it is only the result of a "hidden concord of creative forces," and the opposite periods, the nadir, is the result of "inward contrarieties." Truly a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. What causes the inward concord etc, so that we can lay our hand upon the lever and bring about a crop of great men at a given turn, the astute Frenchman does not tell us. 23 Very cold - 8 below this morning, and zero all day. At dark thermometer began to rise and fine snow soon began to fall. 25 A white Christmas - Earth, sky and air, all white, a foot of snow and a hoar frost covering trees and rocks, left by the white fog, a bad headache yesterday. 26 A whiter world I have never seen, only the undersides of the limbs of the trees and their trunks showing any shade. The air still and filled with a white motionless fog - less a fog than a kind of white opaque condition of the air itself - very peculiar. Yesterday the white fleecy air lifted a little, just clearing the tree tops, and hovered there like the vapor of snow, and about 4 o'clock snow began to fall gently from it - and continued till 8. It is a condition of high frosty mountain tops, become general. Every writer has his peculiar note, It is the scientific note or the religious note, or the note of criticism or of conventionality, or of good fellowship - In Emerson there is always the heroic note. In all his writing and speaking [crossed out: this is] this note predominates, the electric touch of brave deeds, of cheerful confronting of immense odds, the inspiration of courage and self-reliance. Perhaps his match in this respect cannot be found in literature, certainly not among ethical or didactic writers. If in his earlier essays this note seems to us now, a little too pronounced, savoring just a little of tall talk, it did not seem so when we first read [crossed out: them] him. It was as clear and frank and sweet as the note of the bugle. Carlyle once defined poetry - as the heroic of speech; a definition that would not suit Mr. Arnold, but which describes well much of Emersons poetry, and so many of those brave sentences in his essays. In Addison we get the note of urbanity, in Franklin of worldly prudence, in Bacon of large wisdom, in Pope of polished common sense, in Cowley of - discontent, in Swift of arrogance and scorn, in Arnold himself of critical disquietude. In Carlyle the note is one of sorrow and lamentation. In Emerson we come at once upon the chivalrous, heroic attitude and temper. No scorn, no contempt, no defiance, but brave counsel and chivalrous service. Books, he said, "are for nothing but to inspire," and in writing his own books he had but one purpose in view, namely to inspire his reader, to break through the crust of custom and conventionality and the commonplace - much more pronounced when he began to write than now, to scatter his torpidity and spur him to higher and nobler thinking and acting. There are words of prudence, words of enlightenment, words that cheer and comfort; words that divide one thing from another like a blade, words that are like lamps to show us the way; and there are words that are like banners leading to victory. Emersons words are banner-words, beautiful, cheering, rallying, inspiring, seconding and pointing the way to all noble endeavor. What audacity of statement, what courage of affirmation what intrepidity of mind. "Self-trust" he says, "is the essence of heroism" and this martial note pulses through all his writings. [crossed out: In] This passage one might think was written for Walt Whitman, had it not been before the fact: "Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age." Jan 5 To N.Y. to hear Arnold lecture on Emerson last night. A large fine audience; lecturer introduced by Curtis, the pensive Curtis, in a "neat little speech." Curtis is the cosset of the elocutionary graces. He fondly leans and sighs upon and languishes upon their bosoms! Arnold put his M.S. up high on a rack beside him, turned to the audience, [crossed out: gave a] let off a sharp glance in my direction through his one Cockney eye glass, straightened himself up and after a delay that was a little too long, lifted up his voice and spoke his piece - voice too thick and foggy - has none of the clearness and grace of his literary style; hence his lecture is better in the reading than in the hearing. There is something almost like pudding in an Englishmans throat when he speaks from the stage.- Met Rev. John Wood in the afternoon at Houghton, Mi and Co. An Englishman of a lower order - not pleasing to look upon - shapeless in face and body - plump, with a suggestion of frowziness. Mouth also full of pudding - comes near to dropping his h's - the British softness, unctuousness - fat in the tones of the voice, and not lean like us or is it fog and mist and smoke and beef and beer etc. Did not know of Grant Allen. I remember that William Rosetti did not know of Roden Noel. - I have found that there are two ways to get the heat out of your fire wood - first by sawing and splitting it yourself, then by burning it. 6th In writing my whole effort is to put myself in communication with the truth. If I can, then my sails fill, if not, how futile I am. I have no talent but to see and state the thing as it is. 8 Cold, dark, lowering days. Lifes skies dark also, a few days ago all so bright. Again must I face the inevitable. Let me be calm, and see that it is best also. A despatch from home to-day at 4 P.M. that Father has had a stroke; is probably dead now. The blow I have so long dreaded and have been schooling myself to meet has at last fallen. In a few hours I shall know the worst. It is his time to die, and he has long been looking and waiting for the end; it is best so, but oh! how can I lose him from the world, my father! Be still, my heart, be still. It comes to all men, and have not I known it would come to me. When I was leaving him last summer he said with a great burst of emotion, that he hoped it would please God to take him with a stroke. I recall the whole scene vividly; he was approaching the table, where the rest of the family had seated themselves for dinner; I was standing near the door. His tears came fast and his voice was choked with emotion. How many times sitting alone in my study, during the bleak winter nights have I said over the names of my dead, his name alwayshovering near, as if so soon to be added to the list. How many times, while Mother was still living, have I at night felt suddenly drawn towards them, as if I must at once be with them; they were there now, but would soon be gone; why did I tarry here? and I would start from my chair and pace the floor. How many times while home with them, did I look at them and listen to them, as if with the eyes and ears of future years when they [crossed out: should] would be gone; as if to anticipate the crying want I should then feel to see and hear them, and store up memories of them that would then appease my aching heart. "Oh, listen" I would say, when I heard their [crossed out: talk] voices at night in their bed, "so soon you will want to hear those voices and they will be forever still." Now hers is still, and maybe his too, and the kindness and affection I have shown him during these years, will bear its own fruit - in my heart. Twenty-three years ago, in winter, I was summoned home by his illness and expected to find him dead. I was all night on a freight train from New Hamburgh to Rhinebeck; how dismal, how wretched. The stage had gone when I reached Rondout, and I got Mr. Gibbs to take me out to Olive; then father North drove me to Roxbury. At Pine Hill I saw John Powell, Jr, he said father - and my heart stood still while he finished his sentence - was better, as the fact proved. Jan. 21 Stern rugged winter day and the cold snows cover a new grave beside Mothers. At rest at last, after 81 years of life. The event he so long predicted and waited for, and I think toward the last began to long for, came, and came as he had hoped. No suffering, no lingering illness to make trouble in the house. I went home on the 9th. Drove up from the station in the moonlight in a whirl of wind and snow. How lonely and bleak the old place looked in that winter-landscape by moonlight - beleaguring winter without and death within. Jane and Abigail were there with Hiram and some of the neighbors. Father had died at seven in the morning as I had learned at Kingston bytelegraph. How the wind howled and buffeted that night, and the steady roar of the mountain like that of the sea came to me in my sleepless chamber. How often in youth I had heard that roar, but with what different ears, as I snuggled down in my bed while mother tucked me in! Early in the morning I went quietly and with composure and looked upon my fathers face. Never had I looked upon his face before, in the morning before he had arisen without speaking his name, and I could not refrain from speaking his name now, and speaking it again and again. The marble face of death, what unspeakable repose and silence there is in it. I saw more clearly than everbefore how much my own features were like his. The nose the same, only in his case cut away more at the nostrils. The forehead too precisely the same. Head nearly as large, as mine, feet and hands smaller. It was his time to die; it is better so, and the reason said, yes, yes, but oh, the heart! The time for its [crossed out: dead] loved ones to die never comes. Father had been as well as usual up to the hour of his stroke. The only change noticed in him in the last days of his life, was an increased longing for mother. The sense of his loss and his desolation seemed to become more acute and he talked of her much, with profuse tears. That last day he asked for penand paper to write to me and to Uncle Edmund, but did not write. He ate his supper as usual that night and between 7 and 8 o'clock went out [crossed out: to the privy]. John Grant went with him to help him over some slippery places in the path. Then in due time went out to help him in. As he neared the privy door he saw father lean heavily forward as if just risen from the seat and then fall, or slowly pitch down in the corner of the privy. Hiram and his man were putting up grain, against going to mill on the morrow, in the Grainery near by. Grant called to them and they together got father up and into the house. He could not stand and could not speak. When asked if he was hurt he nodded yes. They got him to bedand he fell into a slumber from which he never awoke; lived about 36 hours, becoming more choked in his breathing toward the last from phlegm etc but died easily about 7 A.M. Jan. 9. apoplexy, affecting the right side. While Hiram was putting up the grain, he heard father call to him several times, probably to help him around some wood after Grant had left him. This was the last he ever heard his voice in this world. On Friday the 11th we buried him beside Mother; a snowy misty day. Elder Hewitt preached the funeral sermon, a thorough-going old school Baptist sermon arguing and proving the doctrine of election and foreordination etc and having his fling at all other church denominations, such asermon as father delighted in, and would no doubt have preferred should be preached at his funeral. It was very foolish from my point of view. The old Elder has more spirit and fight in him than ten years ago, when he preached Chancey B's sermon, and less feeling and sentiment. He had been near unto death then, but now his health is good, too good for his preaching. I remember this sentence: "A spring cannot rise about nature" meaning above its source, "They both now in Earth's soft arms are reposing" where we all in due time shall also repose. Diverse and separate in life, in death we become one. My father was so much to me, not perhaps in reality, for he cared nothing for the things I did, and knew me not, but fromthe force of the filial instinct and home feeling in me. He knew me not I say. All my aims and aspirations in life were a sealed book to him as much as his peculiar religious experience was to me. Yet I reckon it was the same leaven working in us both. The delight he had in his bible, in his hymn book, in his Church in his creed, I have in literature, in the poets, in nature. His was related in his thought to his souls salvation hereafter, mine to my souls salvation here. Father was a serious man and full of emotion; his tears always came so easily! He had no art to conceal anything; was as frank and transparent as a child; no deceit, or guile, or craft, no self consciousness, hardly any sense of shame; Mother usedto say had no decency, and no manners. "All I ever had" father would rejoin, "I have never used any of them." Had no concealment or shyness; would ask people and strangers, such personal questions! If he met a stranger in the road would often ask him his name; would ask women their ages, or ask people what they did for a living, or what wages they got, or what their politics was. He used to speak in "Church meeting" and tell his religious experiences after the manner of his sect, always I imagine with choking and tearful emotion. He never prayed openly in his family, tho' when younger frequently read the bible aloud and sang hymns. Once when I was a lad, I overheard him praying in the hog-pen at night. I think it a time of more than usual religious excitement with him, and he went upon his knees in the hog-pen then nearly empty, I imagine, as it was winter. I heard and ran away. Knowing it was not for me to hear. He was violent and bigoted in his religious opinions, speaking rudely and contemptuously of other denominations as did the Elders of his church. "The Signs of the Times" was his religious paper for over 40 years, and he would read those long lugubrious "experiences" of the sisters and brethren with deepest emotion. A harshness in his temperament, red hair and freckled complexion when young, yet such a tender streak in him. Such a fountain of tears! He was harsh and severe with his oxen or horses, or cows when they were ugly, "lugging" the cows and whipping the oxen at a great rate, and yet such an affection for his teams after all. He could tell every yoke of oxen or span of horses he ever owned and relate many incidents about them. I well remember the sickness of one of his horses, when I was a boy, had the "horse distemper" and how assiduously father watched and nursed it and finally pulled it through. Yet he had no mercy on a healthy horse and could whip it till it fell dead I verily believe. (I could too). Father made a great deal of noise about the farm, had great strength of voice and could send it over the hills a mile away; was indeed a noisy man, halloing at the cows, the sheep, the boys, and in drawing rocks with the oxen, you could have heardhim a great distance. He never went away from home, while I was a boy on the farm, without stopping out on the "big hill" and calling back to us some command, or renewal of some order, generally entirely superfluous, always to the annoyance of Mother if she was beside him, his voice was so loud and harsh. Often he would call twice before he got out of sight. Even last summer, he used to exercise his voice, by starting the cows from the upper pasture, a quarter of a mile or more, away. Father had no enemies, no quarrels; never lied or cheated or stirred up strife. His word was as good as his bond. He had a kind of selfishness, but it was like that of children,thoughtless and uncalculating, and related mainly to appetite. He was a hearty eater, and at the table would always pick for the best. He would always take my biggest trout, and the next biggest and the next if I would give it to him, as I usually did. It never occurred to him to decline a thing on the score of manners. Mother used to say it was "hoggishness" and he would not gain say her. I doubt if he ever said "thank you" to any person in his life; I certainly never heard him. I took him and sent him many little things in his latter days, which he always accepted without remark. His was not a brooding, silent, self-conscious nature; exactly the reverse. He had no sentiment, and would snortat what you call poetry, and yet was much of a real poet himself. His faults were like those of children and in his old age, he became childish to a degree. His intelligence and judgement were yet good, when appealed to, but his will, his self-control, his force and authority as a man, were feeble. His curiosity was always great and continued to the last. Father never had much faith in me, the least of any of his children. He saw I was an odd one, and had tendencies and tastes from the first that he did not sympathize with. All the other children he helped with money when they began life, but me. When I wanted help as I did twice or three times in a pinch, he refused; and as it turned out I was the only one of his children, that could or wouldhelp him when the pinch came. A curious retribution, but one that gave me pleasure, and him no pain. I was better unhelped, as it proved, and better for all I could help him. He went according to his light, and perhaps I loved him the better for denying me. I never laid up anything against him, not even the fact that once while I was away to school, and got short of funds, and wanted $5 to help me out, he would not send it, tho' mother berated him soundly for it. Hiram sent me the money and I worked in haying and paid him back. Father did not like my tendency to books; was afraid, as I once found, that I would become a methodist minister, his special aversion.When a lad of about 14 I wanted a grammar and an Algebra, but father would not get them, tho' I coaxed and Mother coaxed and scolded both. I was going down to the village on some other errand and wanted his consent to get them then. He peremptorily refused, but after I had got out on the big hill, by the old "pennyroyal rock," he hallowed to me and said I might get them, mother, in the meantime had made it so hot for him. But my blood was up and I did not get them, but waited till I made some money by making and selling maple sugar in the spring, and then paid for the books myself, and the books were all the sweeter by reason of the maple sugar money. And he was a loving father all the same, and my debt to him I never could repay. He nearly always said no to his children when a favor was asked, but could not often keep his ground; children and mother to back them, usually carried the point. Coax long enough and hard enough, and he was pretty sure to give in. He never whipped me but once in his life, and that very mildly as regards the blows, but very harshly as regards the manner. I had let a cow get in the meadow, and run through the tall grass, which I should have and could have headed off. That was while we yet milked in the road, nearly 40 years ago. Forty years ago this winter (in 1844) he was getting out the timber forthe new barn, getting up in the morning and doing his chores and eating his breakfast before day light, and then with his oxen and dinner pail off into the hemlock woods of old Jonas More's and working all day, for many weeks, cutting and hauling the trees to the saw mill. He was no hunter or fisher, but in his earlier days, delighted in horse-racing. He used to say that he was a "dreadful saucy mean boy" full of oaths, and full of impudence to his Elders, but after he "experience religion" all of that was changed. His favorite by-words, were "by-fagus," "dark as podunk," or dark as a pocket. Many visions of him about the farm in other days come to my sorrowing eyes. As a child of 3 or 4 years, on a long [crossed out: summer] warm spring day, I [crossed out: see] look up on the side hill, and see him striding across the furrows, a bag slung about his shoulders sowing grain, probably oats. This is about my earliest remembrance of him. The hired girl had thrown my hat or bonnet down the steps and I stood crying upon the "stone work," and looking hill-ward. [crossed out: when the "stone work"] I see him again in his old age, probably 66 or 8, following the team out in the clover-meadow - dragging in oats. Back and forth, back and forth all day I see him go, the dust from his drag, (for it was very dry) streaming far behind him - the last memory I have of him engaged in the "Springs work." At night he came in dusty and tired. Gradually he gave up workstill milking, and husking corn in the fall. After Mothers death he sold the farm to Eden, and ceased work entirely. Probably his last work was in cleaning the bugs off the potatoes about the house. Hiram says he husked one stout of corn out by the new barn that fall before he died. Father laid claim to few of the virtues or graces; delighted to tell a good story against himself as well as against another. He owned he was a coward, and would make a poor soldier. When the possee came in Anti-Rent times, he ran under the bed, and they said left his feet sticking out. He always laughed when the story was told. No hypocrisy or pretension about father; he had more virtues than he lay claim to. Well, we shall meet again: our dust in the Earth, and the forces that make up our Spirits in the Eternity of force. Shall we knoweach other then? Ah! shall we. As like knows like in nature. I dare not say farther than that. - A little scene last spring, when Hiram was about buying Eden out. We were standing near the kitchen stove; father asked if it was so, and seemed to feel a sudden pang on being told it was. "Oh, boys" he said turning to Hiram and Eden, his tears choking him, "Stay as you be, stay as you be as long as I live." Unkind as Eden had been to him, and poorly as he had succeeded with the farm, father could not bear the thought of seeing him leave the old place. Father's grand father Ephraim, had two brothers; Eden, who was rector of a college in N. Hampshire, and Stephen, who lived in Bridgeport Ct, and was a ship builder and ship owner and Captain. Eden had a son Stephen, who turned out badly and finally brought up in State prison. My great grandfather was named Ephraim; he had [four] five sons; Eden, my grand father, Daniel, William, David and Curtis, and three daughters. Grandfather lived with his father near Quaker Hill in Dutchess Co. during the Revolutionary War. He was a small boy (born in 1770) and was once scared by a soldier who ran after him on all fours. The family moved to the"Nine Partners." Grandfather helped his father clear some land there on condition that he was to have part of it. This he did not get. Great grandfather then moved to Stamford on the town ship, and lived and died and is buried there. Grandfather soon married andcame here when he probably in 1795, or thereabouts, cutting a road through the woods. Father said his uncle William had told him that the family was Welsh - came from Wales, which is probably true. I note many Celtic traits in them, and in myself - these probably lead all others. Feb. 10 A severe disagreeable winter so far, like last winter. Entirely exceptional, as it was the "off year" and a mild winter was due. Not happened before for the 10 years I have lived here; ice on river one foot thick; thermometer has touched from 10 to 14 below zero. - How apt we are to regard our private attractions and repulsions as laws of nature, affecting allmankind! Finished yesterday Carlyle's "Frederick," begun in the Dec. What an experience to read such a work! It colors ones days and all his thoughts. By far the most striking and effective historical work I have ever read. If all histories were as vivid and entertaining as this I should read nothing but history henceforth. A great Carlylean poem and a fit and artistic completion of his career as a writer. Having preached so long and so vehemently about the strong man at the helm, the divine right and the imperative need of the government of the ablest, etc, he cast about him for an example, and having found the nearest approach to it in Frederick, he devotes the rest of his days to portraying him to showing his life and his work; his obedience to the stern behestsof duty, and the love and obedience of his people to him. The last of the Kings, he says. He makes one thoroughly love and admire Frederick. In many ways he was the embodiment of the Carlylean ideals. - "Wordsworth's poetry," says Arnold, "is great because of the extraordinary power with which W. feels the joy offered to us in Nature, the joy offered to us in simple elementary affections and duties, and because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case he shows us this joy and renders it so as to make us share it." That hits the nail exactly on the head.Feb 12/84 Thinking of Frederick it has often occurred to me how desirable it would be to be one of a people who had a real King like him, the father of his people, a sovereign man at the head of affairs with the reins all in his own hand, a man to reverence, to love, to fear; who called all the women his daughters and all the men his sons, and whom to see or to speak with was the event of a lifetime. Such a man gives head to a nation; he is the head, and the people are the body. Currents of influence must stream down from such a hero to touch the life of the humblest peasant. It is the ideal State; there is an artistic completeness about it. Probably this is why it so moved captivated Carlyleinevitable and inexorable artist that he was. But how impossible to us! how impossible to any people by their own action and choice! We have no Frederick, or if we have, we do not know; neither does he. How to get him at the healm! how to trust him, and obey him? Our only hope is in the collective wisdom of the people, and as extremes so often meet, perhaps this, if thoroughly realized, is as artistic and complete a plan as the other. The "collective folly of the people" Carlyle would say, and perhaps during his whole life he never for a moment saw it otherwise; never saw that the wisdom of the majority could be other than the no-wisdom of blind masses ofof men. Authority, authority, authority, obedience, obedience, obedience, how those words forever sounded in his soul. [crossed out: It may turn out that the universe is a democracy and not a divine disposition that we are all parts of God and that a vast impersonal power rules - the totality of nature determines.] At any rate, there can be no doubt that the democratic movement, the coming forward of the people and the abeyance of single individuals, is a movement of the world of nature; an ocean-current that involves or is the result of, the deepest and widest causes, and there is no stemming it or guiding it; we must trust it. It is the decree of the Eternal. Carlyle never would or could see this; he lashed the sea like Xerxes with his Chains, but it heeded himnot. The Gulf Stream keeps on just the same. Ten fools, or a hundred fools are of course no wiser than one fool - but 10 average men will be wiser in their collective capacity and honesty than any one of the ten. They mentally check and balance each one another, and the result is something like one of Galton's compound (composite) photographs wherein the best features of many faces are combined into one. A nation has a character, a presence, an influence that cannot be found in the individual members. It is said of savage tribes that when they are most peaceable as individuals, they are the most warlike as a tribe and vice versa. There are undoubtedly from time to time currents in humanaffairs, that spring from no one mans will, and that no one man can stem or change. There are natural unseen forces at work that we know not of. Men in their collective capacity will be seized with a spirit that may be entirely foreign to them as individuals. Large masses come under the influence of natural law, and the natural law of mankind is to evolution, to grow, to mount, to expand. A people like ours, therefore though blind, will in the long run and on a large scale, be guided instinctively in the right channels. The impetus, the momentum of the race, is onward and upward. Doubtless, re-action and decay will come in time, but with scienceand right reason, more and more in the lead, this tendency will be more and more counteracted. It was because of Carlyle's fearful bent or bias that he saw not these things. He had not a flexible mind. He saw certain truths with such force and he was precipitated [crossed out: himself] upon them with such vehemence that other truths, equally important, he saw not. If the majority is unsound; how are you to get sound action out of it? But is the majority unsound. If mankind, if the race is unsound, how are we here? Why have we not gone to the dogs long ago? Unsound on a question of philosophy, or of taste, or of literature, in fact, philosophically unsound or darkened, without doubt, but not morallyunsound, else chaos would have come long ago. Collectively sound in instinct, in tendency, in action but in the dark as touching the highest questions, but always able to see and to choose the light. Intellectually the majority is in the dark, or not in the fullest light, but Carlyle proceeds on the assumption that they are morally unsound. This is quite a different thing. Let a people like ours vote on a question of philosophy, or a principle of taste, or a question of mathematics or of jurisprudence, and I would not give much for the verdict. But on a question of primary mortality, or right and wrong as affects conduct, character etc., and who doubts that they would be right? The light comes to the minority first, to the high peaksbut it surely spreads to the majority. But character in the end counts for more than intellect and the character of a people is often the stay and salvation of their leaders. Indeed in our times of keen intellectuality and preponderance of mental acumen, there is more danger that the leaders will prove weak, or dishonest, than there is that the people will prove blind. The majority must afford the stay and ballast to the minority. The people are not politically unsound. Can there be the slightest doubt that a man of shining preeminence, would always command their suffrage? Our most generous, our best selves, always come to the front on such occasions, and any given number of [crossed out: people] persons are sure tovote above themselves, on the principle of emulation. It is doubtful if thieves and pickpockets would publicly vote for one of their own kind. In this country there is generally little choice between the two candidates, and the election hinges upon some mineor circumstance. Feb. 13 Start for Washington today. March 1 In W. since the 14th glad to be here again and see the old familiar places. But a pretty bad time so far; sickness a bad scare about Julian diphtheria in Aaron's family, cold winds etc. On Feb. 24 took a walk to the woods with Dr. Baker, Prof. Ward, and Mr. West, along Piney Branch and Rock Creek. Hepatica in bloom. skunk cabbage in bloom, frog spawn in the pools, a bright lovely day, ground frozen. My old haunts but little changed. A different sentiment in nature as you get reach the Potomac, more atmosphere, and more repose in things. A sentiment very agreeable to me. March 7 Home again today. 9 Ice storm breaking down all the trees; crash, crash on every hand. The devils own winter so far, one of the worst ever known; a winter that would have given some good hints to Dante to be worked up in his Inferno. 13 Spring tokens; chipmunks out; robins, bluebirds and cow buntings here; the nuthatches calling their old calls in the morning; chickadees piping their plaintive love notes; ground coming through the snow; a promise in the air. March 16 Sunday. The Biblical writings are the work of the oriental mind, of an imaginative poetical, exaggerative race, nomadic, wandering, uncivilized; and there can be no doubt but our practical, commercial, industrial, scientific, unpoetic Western races have made a fearful "mess" of them; have perverted and spoiled them utterly. Instead of ideal benefits, we have soughtpractical benefits in them we have materialized and vulgarized these beautiful legends and poems. We want to save our souls by them, not here and now, but by and by. Think of the "plan of salvation", "the scheme of redemption", "vicarious atonement", and so on, which we have framed out of the teachings of Jesus. Nothing in any heathen religion or fetich of a barbarous tribe, rotating callabash, or what not, can be more preposterous, or farther from his real meaning. We pursue the good of the Bible, mechanically, and selfishly. The universe is a kind of police-court where one may bribe the judge with fine words or get off with a fine which another shall pay, or where a good advocate is of first importance.Oh, my brothers and sisters, permit me to tell you, you are a set of asses. Your whole scheme of religion is base and selfish, and is as fictitious as the signs of the zodiac, or the constellations of the astronomers. The stars are there verily, but not the harps, and chairs, and bears, and dippers. The facts of truth and virtue and right conduct remain, too; they too are stars, but your silly schemes to get to heaven and cheat the devil, are inventions of your own cowardice. Be noble men and women, lead true and generous lives, and defy the universe to harm you. Jesus Christ is near, when you forget him and lead as original and fearless as life as he did, from within, not from without.March 22 Back from examining banks on Erie Road this morning at 8 A.M. A bright calm lovely spring day after three days of storm. The river like a great strip of the firmament dotted with stars and moons in the shape of fragments of ice, all but motionless at this moment of near slack water. How the birds call, the old calls, the immemorial calls of spring, sparrows, blue-birds, etc. The call of the nuthatch is one of the most pleasing and spring like of sounds, as is also the fine drawn "phoebe" of the chickadees, like a silk ribbon of a sound. The phoebe bird this morning down toward the ice house. How the bees hum, as in summer! 2 pm A little red butterfly goes dancing swiftly by. A little piper under the hill.- The speculative astronomers do not seem to consider that it is impossible for us to conceive of one planet falling upon another or of the planets falling into the sun. Up is from the earth, down is toward the Earth. Is not this equally true of any of the planets, or upon the sun? Then how can two planetary surfaces come together? Which up would negative the other up? The moon could not fall upon the earth as a meteor falls, or the earth upon the sun. Absolutely, is there any up or down?March 24 Damp still morning, fog on the river. All the [torn page] and twigs of the trees strung [with] drops of water. The grass and [torn page] beaded with fog drops. [Animated?] nature vocal - the distant cawing of crows and crowing of cocks, call of nuthatches and sound of hammers and trains, nearer, the laughter of robins, call of high-hole, and note of phoebe, [crossed out: near] close by the trill and quiver of song sparrows call of blue birds and gurgle of cow-bunting. Two lines of ducks go up the river, one [crossed out: in the air] a few feet beneath the other - on second glance the under line proves to be the shadow of the upper. As the ducks cross a large field of ice, the lower line is suddenly blotted out, as if it had dived beneath the ice. A train of carsacross the river - the train sunk beneath the solid stratum of fog, its plume of smoke and vapor unrolling above it, and slanting away in the distance. A liquid morning, the turf buzzes as you walk over it. Skunk-Cabbage on Saturday, the 22nd, probably in bloom several days this plant always gets ahead of me; it seems to come up like a mushroom in a single night. Water newts just out, and probably piping before the frogs, though not certain about this.March 25 One of the rare days that go before a storm - the flower of a series of days increasingly fair. Tomorrow probably the flower falls - and days of rain and cold prepare the way for another fair day or days. The barometer is probably high today - the birds fly high. I feed my bees on a rock and sit long and watch them covering the combs, and rejoice in their multitudinous humming. The river a great mirror, dotted here and there by small cakes of ice. The first sloop comes up on the tide, like the first butterfly of spring; the little steamer makes her first trip and awakes the echoes with her salutatory whistle, her flag dancingin the sun. Now along the marshes and bushy water courses the red shouldered black birds - starlings sit upon the tree and alder tops, uttering their liquid reedy notes, and awaiting the females. They are first upon the ground, but know their mates will follow and that the pic-nic cannot begin till they arrive. These birds are surely close akin to the bobolinks and cow-buntings. In uttering their notes they make the same movements, a sort of spasm, and their voices are of the same quality.
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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: 1884
Text: March 27 Across the county to Benton's today. Afternoon bright and mild. All the streams full of water, and not a leaf or weed or rush to hide them. How naked and watery the landscape looked, yet refreshing and good. It is pleasant to see the water courses full of clear hurrying water. There is something so vital and renewing in water. This too was the liquidation of winter; his rigid icy form full of life and motion. The little brown brooks, how swift and strong they ran; and the larger...
Show moreMarch 27 Across the county to Benton's today. Afternoon bright and mild. All the streams full of water, and not a leaf or weed or rush to hide them. How naked and watery the landscape looked, yet refreshing and good. It is pleasant to see the water courses full of clear hurrying water. There is something so vital and renewing in water. This too was the liquidation of winter; his rigid icy form full of life and motion. The little brown brooks, how swift and strong they ran; and the larger creeks, how they pushed on trailing their ragged skirts along the edges of the fields and marshes. [crossed out: Little saucer-shaped pools and lakelets in the][crossed out: meadows and pastures, showing the greening turf beneath them] Many a slope [crossed out: sends in a] runs down to a little saucer shaped pool or lakelet - a turfy apron filled with clear water. The cattle sun themselves upon the damp sward without fear of ague or rheumatism. No obsolete water courses now. The creek seeks out many an abandoned bed and lingers and loiters there as if dwelling upon the memory of other days. The golden willows, their tops as yellow as if the sunshine had become fixed there, a kind of permanent gilding, how the eye lingers upon them! A bountiful supply of water! It reaches or laps away many a parched place in my memory. Only desires and afflictions go out toward the full streams. No fear of drought in Nature now, no stagnation. Her circulation is brisk. No cure for a festering pool like hydropathy; no relief for a parched field like the wet-pack. Here and there an elm or an oak stands in the midst of a clear pool as if rising from its bath. And all the waters are clear and sweet. No corruption now, no liquid mud, as in a summer freshet; no dead water as comes down-stream with the fall rise. All is trout water; all is spring water. Here and there on the brown earth a dab of new green where the warmth of a spring has made itself felt. Now the first notes of the brown meadow starling come up from the browner meadows, now the red shouldered black bird perch in the golden willows or amid the cat-tail flags and utter their liquid brook-side notes. 31. The top of a high barometric wave-a day like a crest, lifted up, sightly, sparkling. A cold snap, without storm, issuing in this clear, dazzling, sharp, northern day. How light, as if illuminated by more than the sun; the sky is full of light; light seems to be streaming up all around the horizon. The leafless trees seem to make no shadows; the woods are flooded with light; everything shines. [crossed out: The day is] Day large and imposing, breathing strong masculine breaths out of the North; day without a speck of film winnowed through and through; the golden beams of the sun sifter of all obscurity. Day of crumpled rivers, of crested waves, of bellying sails, high-domed, lustrous day. The only typical March day of the brilliant heroic sort we have had.April lst Welcome to April, my natal month; in many ways the most poetical month of the year, the month of the swelling bud, [crossed out: and first] the springing grass, and the first shad! Month of the first birds nests, [crossed out: and] the first plantings, the first flowers. The door of the season first stands ajar this month, and gives us a peep beyond. The month in which to begin the World, in which to begin your house, in which to begin your courtship; in which to enter upon any enterprise. The bees get their first pollen this month and their first honey. All hibernating creatures [crossed out: crawl] are out before April is past.Now at 11 a.m., the day is soft and brilliant; a let-down from yesterday, but equally fair, the wind blown out, and only drifting a little this way and that. The air quivers above the fields, looking, Julian says, like oil; it is the mingling of hot air and cold. Phoebe calls, the bees hum, the sparrow sings. To my delight in these things come the thought, with a fresh pang, "father is in his grave."April 2nd Out of the sharp brilliant days comes snow as I predicted. [crossed out: lazy static days] The snow-crystals were forming in the crystal air; that light in the north was the light of the forge where the ice-spears were being shaped. Snow all day, much of it melting as it falls. April 3rd My 47th birthday - my first fatherless birthday. I have lived to see my father and mother grow old and die and be buried from my sight. Well, it is the order of nature that the child should look upon the grave of his parents, rather than they upon his grave. I should have been at the old home today but for this storm and snow. But how empty and desolate that home is I know full well. Health pretty good, but more lameness or soreness in right leg than ever before; left leg quite free from it; arms strong, with only now and then slight twinge of shooting pain. Seem to be stronger in many ways than one year ago. Three or four inches of heavy snow on the ground. I roll up big snow balls for J. uncovering a strip of green grass behind me. - New girl came April 1st our 25th girl. 7. Go home to-day in afternoon. Walk up from the depot through mud and snow. Snowbanks high, roads full. Reach home a little before dark. Hiram Olly and the new dairy-maid alone in the house. No father to open the door for me now. Hiram well and cheerful-more so than I expected to find him. An empty house. I look about the familiar kitchen and wander through the other rooms as in a strange kind of dream. While eating my supper am shocked by being told of the serious illness of Channy Caswell, my niece's little boy to whom I am greatly attached.8 A day of great brightness and clearness - a crystalline April day that precedes snow. I go up in the sugar-bush and linger for an hour about the old place. The air is still and has the property of being "hollow" as the farmers say; that is, it is heavy, motionless and transmits sounds well. Every warble of a bluebird or robin, or caw of crow, or bark of dog, or bleat of sheep, or cackle of geese, or call of boy or man, within the landscape comes to ear. The smoke from the chimney goes straight up. Then I walk down to Abigails and back. Shore-larks in the bare fields run or flit before me. I hear their shuffling, jingling, lisping, half inarticulate song. The crows are conspicuous in the brown fields, or against the snow-banks, or in the clear sky. How still the air; one could carry a lighted candel over the hills. The light becomes very strong and the effect of the wall of white mountains rising up all around from the checkered landscape is very strange. The blue dome of the sky rests upon them. In the afternoon go down to Smith Caswell's to see Channy. Walking fearful-mud and melting snow every where; walk the walls when I can. Cut across the hill to Smiths. See a woodchuck here and there. Poor Channy verybad; am alarmed when I look upon him, sitting nearly up right in bed, almost panting rather than breathing. Smith and Emma apparently not much alarmed. Say he is better than yesterday, and has a little appetite. He is very nervous, makes no complaint, but rolls his head from side to side a good deal, just as my little sister Evaline did 30 years ago, when she was dying. Oh, I fear it is death. Some strange affection of his right lung, perhaps an abscess, the return of the danger passed through last fall. I stay but a little while; cannot bear to be near the suffering child. Stop and take tea with Curtis. A sad walk home in the early evening.9. A crystalline day in the spring brings crystals. Snows nearly all day. No "hollow" air now, the hollow filled with a snowbank! Boil sap in the woods [crossed out: in the ???] nearly all day amid the wet falling snow. The sparrows will sing now and then amid the storm. Thoughts of father and mother and of my early and late life on the farm fill my mind. 10 Still stormy and squally and unpleasant. Boil sap in the woods; everything covered with wet snow. When I go down to dinner at noon Olly tells me they have just heard of Channy's death; died last night in his mother's arms. Poor stricken Smith and Emma what will they do is the first thought. He was their all, and a boy of rare sweetness, gentleness and intelligence. In the afternoon Hiram K. Jr. drives me down, Abigail, Olly and myself. Can I ever forget that look of utter despair upon Emma's tear drenched face as she came and threw herself upon me! "Oh Uncle John, he is gone, he is gone, my darling! [crossed out: he] and I was all alone with him when he died." What words had I to comfort her, or to comfort him, when he came towards me, as if for succor, none. I could only pour out my tears with their own. I loved the boy dearly and never so much as when I saw his lifeless form lying there in his crib, and when all love was vain. [Crossed out: Such] It was enough to break my heart to look upon him, he was so beautiful. Asleep, but oh, such sleep; such repose, with that pensive, heart-breaking look about the closed eyes, that death alone can give. Oh, that look, who can describe it, the look of a sweet innocent boy who has met a speedy death! It defies all words, the memory of it is a sorrowful, yet beautiful possession forever. [crossed out: In the] Curtis and I go down to the grave yard and select the spot for his grave beside his uncle, Chaney B. Deyoe, whose death, 10 years ago, come May, was my first great sorrow in this world. By fathers new made grave I pause with such thoughts as few may know, and by Mother's, and by the graves of all my dead. Curtis says to me "here I suppose we will all lay "one of these days." Yes I reply, here is to be our last bed." Each trying to talk carelessly and hiding any emotion. Whose place will be next to father I mentally asked and had my own thoughts. 11 Boil Sap with Hiram in forenoon. In afternoon go over the hill, walking fence-tops and, to see old Mrs Smith once more. Stop and have another look in Grandfathers old house, with long long thoughts. Mrs. Smith in bed for the past three months quite helpless, slowly sinking into the dark gulf. Not dark to her mind tho, but all light and peace. She lay and talked to me as if in health, cheerful, alert, curious, canny. The sweet, pious, old Scotch woman who left her native land (Forres) near 50 years ago. She had known me as a baby, and now as a gray, saddened man. Her son William from Iowa, whither he went 15 years ago, with her all winter and I could see, intended to stick to her till the end. Every night he reads a chapter in the Book, and she lying there on her back, conducts family prayers. He told me much about the West and his life there that was interesting. About 4 I say good bye and never again expect to set eyes on the dear old Scotch woman.12. Bright and clear. Again I walk down to the house of death over my former course, with many long pauses on the brown, sun-drenched hills and fields. Smith and Emma calm with now and then a paroxysm of grief. In afternoon we bury the dear child beside his uncle and all is over. Foolish and illiterate John Hubble preached from the text. "Be still, and know that I am God" Oh, how I should like to have talked from that text, if I were in the way of such things In the morning of the day Channy died, he asked to be taken to the window to look out (nearly always a fatal sign) "How sweet the birds do sing" the dear soul said. I know well when the loss will be felt most keenly by Smith and Emma - if there can be degrees in such suffering. When they wake in the morning after the blessed forgetfulness of sleep. Oh, what a pang the first waking moment will bring! Abigail said she heard them weeping and moaning about 4 o'clock. My God, how my heart bleeds for them! 13. Another bright, still day. Boil sap in the woods till noon, then to the train and home at night. [Crossed out: 15] 14 Julians birth day - bright and warm, and vocal with bird songs. Pluck some dark blue sweet scented hepaticas, nearly as sweet as arbutus. 15 First warm south rain of the season. How fresh, how welcome it is. The grass greens as if by magic. Robins laugh, high-holes call, sparrows sing. Sparrows, phoebes, and blue birds are building nests. 16 Warm, wooing, moist, half sunshine, half shadow. The warmest, most spring-like day of the season. Julian and I walk up to the P.O. See the honey bees working on the pussy willows. Walk back on the R.R. track, blood-root and dicentra in bloom, also arbutus. Paint and fix our boat. The way Arnold steers clear of the novel, the curious, the surprising, in fact, of everything fanciful, far-fetched, or strained or violent, leads people to accuse him of dealing only in common-places. But this is not quite just. His ideas are easy and obvious and near at hand, and this is his glory, as it is of all great writers. It is the application that is fresh and surprising. You must look for no bric-a-brac in his pages, no curious specimens, no novel or fantastic ideas, but the most common and universal ideas. 20 Sunday. A walk to the woods. First swallow today.April 21 North wind for nearly a week now, today becoming nearly a gale. The river this morning wears its sternest, most masculine look. The tide is breasting the wind and there is stiff opposition. A great molten mass down there, rolling and heaving, in strange contrast to the dark motionless shores. These days when the sky is free of clouds, the sun seems traveling in a dim pink haze. At a little distance from the sun it becomes quite distinct and gradually fades away at a greater distance from him. The same condition of the sky that begat our crimson sunsets and sunrises last fall and spring.April 23 A charming April morning, [crossed out: the day] still, smoky, dreamy; the day reposing, sleeping as in a hammock after the long period of windy boisterous weather. The boats of the fisher-men float in a dark firmament of water. The gummy fragrant budscales of the balm of Gilead strew the road. They are like the beaks of birds. Indeed the scales are falling from the eyes of all the buds now. There is some-thing very suggestive about these dropping scales. The snakes and frogs shedding their skins, and the birds shedding the outer webs of their feathers, are samples of the same process. The chick escaping from the shell is but a bud dropping its scales. The bursting buds of the poplars and hickories give forth a gummy perfume. One may often catch a whiff of this bud perfume on the April air. No fragrance of May bloom is so bewitching. The bees know the value of the gummy buds; here they get their propolis to varnish their hives and seal up the cracks, etc. They probably carry it in their jaws. (Quimby says on their thighs and is doubtless right) Buds are kind of seeds. Many birds live on them, as the grouse, the grosbeck, [crossed out: Sp] English sparrows, etc. Think of the slow silent falling of the scales all through the woods - Nature unpacking or undoing her parcels and throwing the wrapping away.The quickening of the earth at this season is in streaks and spots. All the more fat, moist, and genial places in the fields green first. Along the fences the turf awakens before it does in the middle of the lot. Soft maple in bloom; first anemone to-day. A great many sweet scented hepaticas to-day. P.M. a day of great lustre and beauty. Columns of smoke from burning rubbish. So beautiful the day, like a rare jewel, and yet it is gone before one can thoroughly seize upon it.April 27. A Sunday of great beauty and warmth. Signs of a drought. Yesterday went to the woods with my P. correspondent. Saw honey-bee gathering pollen from blood root. A rough, bushy, neglected piece of ground was starred with these flowers. Apparently the rougher the ground the more delicate the wild flowers. The flower of the blood root enclosed [crossed out: by] or partly enclosed by the leaf, is very striking and beautiful. Bees gather pollen from the adder's tongue also. A great many sweet-scented hepaticas this year, more than ever before. The keen relish of the earlier April days begins to wane as the heat increases. April 30. A ride to Coxsackie; met Mary Hallock Foote and her husband and children on the train en route for Idaho. A woman with a rare charm - full of genius, and full of womanliness. Said my "British Fertility" made her sad; quoted Holmes's remark that "grass makes girls"; thought instead of troubling ourselves about "Woman's rights" we had better look to woman's health, and study physiology and the laws of life a little more; all other questions were premature. A bright lovely day. What pleasure to ride through the country at this time - spring so visible upon the ground, but hardly discernible yet in the trees, as if the latter waited to give the earth a chance. How vivid the green here and there; the homefeeling, the work of man in the landscape, is enhanced and brought out. Nearly every farm house has a more genial and expressive look than it will have bye and bye. How the green deepens all about the barns and rich moist places. How friendly certain nooks and slopes look, as if one would like to recline there or walk there. Here and there a little meadow water-course golden with marsh marigolds. Here and there the bloom of the red maple shows vividly against the tender green of a slope beyond. The fresh-plowed fields, too, and the teams plowing or harrowing, the [crossed out: far] sower sowing, and pausing to regard the flying train - how it all pleased! Oh, Spring, all thysights and sounds are fresh and pleasing. The harvesting looks wearisome, but the sowing and planting, how attractive! There is nothing cloying in nature now, but all is appetizing.May 1st A soft, gentle May day; the sky white, the sunlight veiled. The first shad trees just in bloom; currants blooming; the tree tops in the woods slightly misty with swelling buds. The songs of the song sparrow and of the vesper and bush sparrows come in at my open door with scarcely a pause. English maples in bloom, native maples with large buds. Byron says, "So far are the principles of poetry from being invariable that they never were nor ever will be settled. These principles mean nothing more than the predelictions of a particular age, and every age has its own, and different from its predecessor. It is now Homer, [crossed out: it is] and now Virgil; once Dryden and since Sir Walter Scott; now Corneille, and now Racine," Now Byron, and now Tennyson.When the lean Kine in Pharaoh's dream had eaten up the fat Kine, they were still lean and ill-favored. There is a kind of tape-worm greed in most of us, for wealth, fame, etc., that is is never satisfied. May 3 To Roxbury this afternoon; to Smith Caswells at night. Poor Emma, how haggard and pale she looked. Smith told me he could think of nothing else but Channy. When he was talking with anyone, he said he did not think of what he was saying. In the morning we go up to Hiram's, through the fields and woods. In the afternoon I go over to Edens with Ed. 5 Raining. Eden and I go a-fishing, but with poor luck.10. A cold wet week, much rain; a flood in the streams. To Stamford on the 5th, to Delhi on the 6th. On the 7th, Curtis, Hiram and I went down and sodded father's grave. A cold, wettish day. I cannot set down my thoughts or feelings here. On the 8th to Andes and home in the evening. Mrs. B. here The leaves coming forth rapidly. The rarer birds arriving. Emma said Channy went to school this spring one week and two days. What a brief career! What pathos in that "week and two days"!- Depth of feeling, depth of emotion, profundity of soul, are much more important than extent, or correctness of knowledge. To feel deeply is better than to see clearly - soul is worth more than intellect, love outweighs understanding. Feeling, emotion, stamp future generations, stamp the child unborn; [crossed out: the] science does not. The grandeur and importance of the Puritans was not in what they believed, but in how they believed it. Science laughs at their beliefs, but the world was shaped by their seriousness and power. The grandeur of the Biblical characters is in their depth and sincerity of feeling. Who would not expect greater men to be born out of an age of Puritanism than out of such an age as ours? Serious, earnest men - with such are the secrets of power; to such belong the world, not to mere men of knowledge.Sunday May 18 - A delightful day. The height of the apple bloom; great clouds of white and pink petals against the green. A pale, yellowish green lace-work of foliage over all the woods. The fringed polygala in bloom. The trees across in Langdons woods individualized as usual at this season. Some of the oaks a delicate flesh tint. 22 Getting hot. Foliage all out except upon the oaks, button balls, and a few other trees. The apple-bloom beginning to fall. Two orioles dart into an apple tree and shake down the white petals like snow. The cotton of the pussy willows [crossed out: ?] ripe for the breeze. Air full of bird voices, The cluster of young leaves of the hickory on their long stems are surrounded at the base with a frill or ruffle of flesh-colored inner bud scales. Along an old wood road in the woods the little frogs (hylodes) as thick as grasshoppers in a summer field. They are all out of the marshes and in the woods now. 24 Thermometer 90 in the shade. - To what extent does this law of the sphericity of the globe, this circular law of nature, pervade the mind? Probably it pervades it entirely. Probably the very conditions of consciousness, and all our intellectual processes have reference to the fact that the earth is round, and that up and down have no meaning in absolute space, and boundaries and limitations no meaning. May 27th. A charming day; the 10th anniversary of dear Channy B's death. Clover just blooming; all the birds busy; farmers planting corn; dandelions holding their frail gloves, like lamps, above the grass; first butter-cups athand. Thinking of starting to-morrow for New Haven to see Ingersoll. Just learned of the death of Maj. Bates, of the Comptroller's office, an old friend of mine; rest his soul in peace. 28. Rainy and cold; to NY and thence to New Haven by boat. 29. With Ingersoll about New Haven. A walk to "East Rock" in morning; to Maltby Park in: afternoon; very cold season a little later than at home. 30. Heavy frost last night; great damage to gardens and vineyards all over the country. Grapes and strawberries all killed about N.H. In the low lands, ferns, sumac, ash, butternut killed as in September; an autumnal odor on the air. 31. Home today at 7 p.m. Find little or no damage by frost to my fruit and vegetables. But back from the river vineyards suffered severely.June 1st Bright cool day. Found a female gold-finch in the bushes near the study with one wing tied by what appeared to be a kind of tough elastic web. The outer quill of the left wing was fastened by the end to the end of a feather on the rump and the bird was helpless and made little effort to escape me. It took quite a little force to liberate the wing. When the little bird found herself free, she darted like an arrow and screamed with delight. Probably just such an accident never before befell a bird. Was it a spider's web? Looked like it, but stronger and more adhesive. As tough as bird-lime, but no bird lime about here. - Just finished Morleys essay on Emerson. Full of bright, strong things, but by no means the masterpiece Arnold's essay on same subject is; less simplicity, directness, ease, clearness; it is more difficult, scatters more, and not so easily abridged or reduced to its lowest terms. Some English critic saysthat Newman and Morley are the only two British writers now who have the quality-of style. But [crossed out: Arnold] Morley has far less style than Arnold; in fact, cannot approach him in the qualities that make the master. 2. Clear, cool and rather dry. Here I sit and see my days go by, my days; one by one they pass, and there are only just so many of them, all mine, but no hand of mine can stay them. They pass just the same, whether one is ready for them or not. If one could only hoard his days and use them when best able to, or when most needed, like his income! But this day of mine, when gone, is gone for all eternity. June 3rd As a writer, especially on literary themes, I suffer much from the want of a certain manly or masculine quality, the quality of self-assertion - strength and firmness of outline of individuality. I am not easy and steady in my shoes. The common and vulgar form of the quality I speak of is called "cheek". But in the master writer, it is firmness, dignity, composure - a steady unconscious assertion of his own personality. When I try to assert myself I waver and am painfully self-conscious, and fall into curious delusions. I think I have a certain strength and positiveness of character, but lack egoism. It is a family weakness; all my brothers are weak as men; do not make themselves felt for good or bad in the community. But this weakness of the I in me is probably a great help to me as a writer upon Nature.I do not stand in my own light. I am pure spirit, pure feeling, and get very close to bird and beast. My thin skin lets the shy and delicate influences pass. I can surrender myself to Nature without effort. I am like her. That which hinders me with men, and makes me weak and ill at ease in their presence makes me strong with impersonal Nature and admits me to her influences. - I lack the firm moral fibre of such men as Emerson and Carlyle. I am more tender and sympathetic than either perhaps, but there is a plebeian streak in me, not in them. This again helps me with Nature, but hinders with men.- A green snake in the grass in front of my study; disposed carelessly across the tops of the bending spears, all but invisible; by mere chance I see him as I lift my eye from my book; first think it is some plant. After a while he slowly, very slowly, like the hand of a clock, draws himself down into the finer grass of the bottom. After he has reached the ground with the forward part of his body, he still keeps his tail upright, which slowly sinks into the grass like a green stalk going into the ground. All this for protection I suppose. He was practically invisible.5 Very hot again, 88 in shade. The June perfumes upon the air; the night air heavy laden with the odor of the honey locust; the wild-grape scents the lanes and wood sides. The earlier grasses in bloom, wild strawberries just ripening; the hives sending forth their first swarms; many birds busy with their second nests: black-berries blooming; the daisies and the buttercups paint all the fields. 9 A quart wild strawberries today below Hollands. The nest of the golden crowned thrush on the edge of the fields under a pine; nearly stepped upon it; admirably concealed; 4 white speckled eggs. Hot and dry. Mrs. B. gone to Delhi.June 16. Cool and very dry. Idling away the summer days reading Plutarch, Bates, Amazon, and Sainte Beuve. Mrs. B. still away at Delhi. - It often occurs to me how trivial and insignificant my life is compared with what father's and mothers was. What a battle they fought, how arduous, how prolonged. Full of care, full of work for over 50 years. The paying for the farm, the self-denial, the ceaseless toil, the rearing of a large family; my ease, my leisure, my freedom from responsibility, [crossed out: almost?] quite unknown to them. Up early and late, winter and summer, the large dairy, the spring work, the haying and harvesting the fall harvesting, the buttermaking and early in their histories, spinning and weaving, and making of the clothes, their simple pastimes - going to Red Kill, or over to Uncle Thomas's once or twice a season, and at intervals of 10 or 15 years driving to Pennsylvania to see their friends there. I can recall but three trips they made together to Pa: once when I was a child of 5 or 6; then when I was 18; and again in 1871, while I was in England. It was a great event for them to drive there and was discussed and planned for years in advance. It took them 3 or 4 days each way. Mother went alone to Pa. in 1876.[crossed out: I can] When I was a youth father grew the flax and made the tow from which mother made our linen clothes and linen for the house. He grew the wool also from which our winter clothes were made. Mother spun the yarn, and and the cloth was woven at a fulling mill. How slight my toils and troubles, and my little essay writing seems compared with such lives. The blue-devils never found them idle and vacant as they do me. There is no panoply, no shield like utter absorption in work. A large family too shields and fends one, and to be a part and parcel of your neighborhood, of your townto belong there, to have grown there to have been put there by destiny is a great matter. What comfort they had in their church, in their "yearly meetings", and in their "associations"; what comfort in the intercourse with their friends! They lived on a low plane as it were and the ambitions, the doubts, the yearnings, the disappointments - all the most far reaching shafts of evil fortune, passed over their heads. How gladly would I too have filled my house with children! How gladly I would have surrounded myself with troops of friends; how gladly would I take root and become one with my fellows!19. Very hot, very dry. No rain since May 27th. June turning to dust. The eye of the day has an infernal glare, like that of a maniac. - Do I believe in answer to prayer? Yes, when the faith is perfect. But if men knew the secret of the Lord in this respect, their prayers would not be answered, because they could not have faith. If they knew that putting themselves in the right attitude, in properly opening their minds and hearts, in other words, a proper exercise of faith-if they knew that this was the answer, the blessing they sought instead of something bestowed, as from one person to another, I fear they could not pray. It is [crossed out: necessary] a scientific necessity that you believe the blessing you ask will be granted, and this act of belief is the blessing, and the humility, and feeling of self unworthiness that goes with it. My prayers would not be answeredbecause I cannot believe. I know the secret; they would be insincere and false. I know that prayers are self-answered; that the laws of mind and spirit are such that every sincere prostration of the soul before the Supreme Good is ennobling, tranquilizing, healing. Can there be any doubt say that the soldier, or the general, who before going to battle, has worked himself up to an exalted state of mind, that he falls upon his knees and devoutly and believingly prays God to help him overcome his enemies, will fight more courageously and heroically, than another? The belief that God is helping him is a kind of intoxication; it nerves his arm; it fires his heart, and the victory is already his. Of course God helps him in no other way, not in the way he asked or expects; he is self-deluded and hence self-helped. His belief that God is helping him is God helping him. So, in a thousand other matters. The child is quiet and goes to sleep while it believesits mother is in the room with it, though she may have left long before. Battles have been won by generals not knowing when they were beaten; an attacking column has pressed on against great odds and won the day, because it believed that the other wings of the army were engaging the enemy at another point, or attacking them in the rear, when such was not the case at all. (See one of the battles of Frederick.) Man is strong in his delusions. If he believes in miracles, then miracles practically happen. No ghosts are seen after men cease to believe in ghosts. No witches are hung or burnt after men abandon the belief in witches. The evil eye is in the power of fear and superstition. All these things involve curious psychological laws. A belief that a Supreme Being, a supreme Father, is watching over you in times of danger, in shipwreck, in battle, etc, begets tranquility and [crossed out: comfort?] clearness and steadiness of mind, and intrepidity of spirit, and hence, to all intents and purposes, Goddoes watch over you. The danger is not in danger, but in the fear of danger. The man who is lost in the woods, or on the plains, and prays to God sincerely for help, has all his wits and senses sharpened by that act of faith, and is thereby helped. Because this is so, because mankind [crossed out: have] has in all ages, the heathen and pagan, as well as the Christian, been blessed by sincere prayer to [crossed out: their] the gods, [crossed out: they] men have come finally to pervert and vulgarize prayer by asking for outward, material good. They pray for rain. As soon pray for an eclipse, or for a full moon when it is the old, or for high tide when it is in the ebb. They also seek to influence and change the mind of the Unchangeable. All Christendom prayed for Garfield but it was of no avail, because his wound was mortal. Does prayer ever stop theyellow fever before frost comes? Is there any case where it is safe to let your piety offset a neglect of sanitary observance. If sewer-gas gets into your house, will holiness keep the distemper out? No vaxination is a better safe-guard against small-pox than prayer, no matter how serious. Faith may move mountains, but it never yet removed stone in the bladder, etc. Thou shalt not pray for outward, material good. The fond mother prays that her son may be kept and guided in ways of virtue, but it is the love of virtue in her own heart which [crossed out: she has] he drew in with the milk from her breast, that saves him, if anything. She prays that he may be kept from shipwreck or from sickness and death, but alas how often is he not. But let the mother pray for him still; it will do her good, if it does not save him.Pray for spiritual good, for humility, for contriteness, for tranquility, for singleness of heart. It is strange that mankind has not learned that it is only such prayers that are answered. That God is really "without variableness, or shadow of turning", and that serious aspiration after the high and the good is itself the blessing. What remains for us who cannot pray, who cannot believe in God as something objective and apart from us - a supreme man or parent that bestows or withholds gifts and good? This alone, and this is enough, to love virtue, to love truth, to keep the soul open and hospitable to whatsoever things are true, and of good report and a constant desire and aspiration for more light, more truth, for nobler and simpler lives is better than any spasmodic appeal to the Supreme Good. There need be no delusions or illusions. God is not a personor a parent, or even the "moral and intelligent governor of the universe"; prayers are not mechanically answered, but the more we love truth and virtue, the more we love any noble and worthy thing, the more we grow in grace. If my child were to die of mortal disease, I could not pray God to reconcile me to the terrible dispensation, as my fathers could have done; but I could see in it the same law that gave him life, that upholds the world, and could say "thy will be done." Unless poison kills, and fire burns, life were not possible. If natural law is violated, pain, and maybe death, is the result: I would not have it otherwise. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" The universe is good; it is good because it is adapted to my constitution, it was not shaped to me, but I to it. God did not make the light to suit my eye, but the eye to suit the light,The benefits of pain, of struggle, of sorrow, of fiery trials, are inwoven in the nature of things; the race has come through a fiery furnace, and obstacles strengthen; we are chastised and the species has grown and been evolved through chastise-ment. In no other way does God mould and shape us. It is a greater consolation to me to know that the universe is governed by unalterable law, than that it is subject to any capricious and changeable will. I like to know that what we call God is without variableness or shadow of turning. We know now what to depend on. Strict justice is and must be done to every creature, else life and nature would miscarry. I ask but justice, yes, I demand it, and let me not flinch and whimper.June 22. The only meaning, the only truth that underlies the doctrine of vicarious atonement, is the lesson of unselfishness, to live and die for others - a new doctrine that probably had much to do with [crossed out: its] begetting modern philosophy and humanitarianism. The ancient world, the earlier races were selfish, and to suffer and die for others was a new doctrine to it. This is one of the ways of salvation, salvation from present [crossed out: ?] selfishness. In any other sense the idea of vicarious atonement is preposterous and an offence to the nostrils. That Christ could or did save you or me in another way than by exemplifying to us a noble, unselfish life, is a fable, and a vulgar, debasing [crossed out: ?] fable. Every man or martyr who dies for a principle for an honest conviction, dies for the race. The old martyrs died for you and me just as much, and in the same way, that Christ did.26. A fine rian last night from the north after great heat and a drought of one month. Too late to help the meadows, but will save other crops. Cool and fresh. - There is a thought that has often knocked at the door of my mind and as often been invited in, but which I have never been able to get fairly entered and seated and entertained - this, namely, that man is a part of nature that his conscience, benevolence, and virtues, intelligence, etc., come out of this great savage brute nature. What does it mean? I must brood up on this some time.27. Cool and delicious. The river all light and motion this morning; ten thousand diamonds flash from its surface. 29 Tranquil summer days; elder in bloom; chestnut trees just getting hoary. Looking down upon our forests at a distance the foliage seems to call or boil up - the impression of arrested or impending agitation, and of a swirling, rolling, upheaving motion. The feeling of repose is lacking. - Ten years now have I lived in the wilderness of Esopus and 27 years with a scolding wife. Yet many men have had a worse fate; the wilderness hath its attractions, and the scolding wife her good traits. She is by temperamentand physiology attractive to me, tho' her temper and mental makeup are my special antipathy. In her eyes I am one of the most selfish men that ever lived, and she herself a perfect martyr. She treats my writing and literary propensities as a kind of lazy self-indulgence that ought not to be countenanced a moment - twits me of sitting around and letting her be my "nigger" killing herself. She will not, she cannot see that she is her own nigger - the slave of the most deep grained and unconscious selfishness I ever saw. She does nothing for others, or to please others; but her life is devoted to indulging her own taste for cleanliness and order in and about her house; carried to such a degree that everyone else is made uncomfortable by it. She cleaned and swept me out of the house 3 years ago, and promises to clean me completely off the place. July 2nd 9 A.M. A little tragedy over the fence a few yards from me: two song sparrows, trying to defend their nest against a black snake. The curious interrogating note of a chicken who stood near by first caused me to look up from my Plutarch. I saw the raised wings and moving forms of the sparrows about a large tussock of grass and low bushes, and then the gliding springing snake. The sparrows darted about and through the little clump of weeds and low bushes, apparently trying to seize the snake or beat him off. Their wings and tails were spread, their beaks open from the heat, and struggle and despair and desperation in every movement. I thought that maybe the snake was trying to charm them, so I looked on intently from behind the fence. The birds charged him and harassedhim on every side, but did not seem to be under any spell except that of courage in defending their nest. Every moment or two I could see the head and neck of the serpent make a sweep at them, then the bird struck at would fall back and the other one would follow up the attack from the other side. There was evidently little danger that the snake could strike and hold one of the birds, though I fairly trembled for them, they were so bold and approached so near to the snake's head. I saw him spring at them at least a half dozen times. How the poor birds panted and lifted their wings appealingly. Then the snake started for the wall pursued by the birds. A stone which I hurled at him failed to take effect, and he rushed for cover under the wall. I found the nest rifled and disarranged; whetherit had contained eggs or young I know not. The male sparrow had cheered me here many of a day with his song, and I blame myself for not rushing at once to his rescue when the arch one was upon him. There is probably no truth in the current notion that snakes charm birds. The black snake is the most subtle, alert and devilish of our snakes, and I have never seen him have any but young, helpless birds in his mouth. Getting dry again and hot. 90 degrees in the shade. 3rd To Benton's to-day, all of us; reach there about 2 1/2 P.M. Stay to B's till the 9th. A dull, heavy time for the most part. [crossed out: Mrs B.] Wife out of sorts. Mrs. Booth came Saturday night. Found Ingersoll here on my return. 11 Ingersoll and I and the Van Benschotens go to black pond after pond lilies. A good time. July 14 Ingersoll and I start for a climb among the Catskills. From Boiceville go to the Wittenberg. Pass the night there. Return to Phoenicia by way of Snyder Hollow. Ought to write a short article on the trip. 18 Very cool, for the past ten days, almost like fall. Moses cried, "When, Oh, Lord, shall I find thee?" God said, Know that when thou hast sought thou has already found me." "The best prayers", says Joubert, "are those which have nothing distinct, and which thus partakeof adoration. God listens but to thoughts and sentiments." "To ask is to receive when we ask for a genuine good." "We always believe that God is like ourselves; the indulgent affirm him indulgent; the stern, terrible", - Joubert. He said when he left Paris he parted from his friends, when he left the country he parted from himself. - Ours is a mechanical age. Its voice is the steam whistle loud, dissonant, hideous. A row boat shoots along over the smooth glassy surface of the river; reminds me in some ways of a spider spinning its web, something seems to be drawn out from its stem [crossed out: and be] which shows a long widening line on the surface of the water.Indications of mid-summer. Flies aggressive, dispute your dinner with you at the restaurant, disturb you after your noon nap; swallows perch on the telegraph wires; song birds begin to let up; white elder blows; buckle berries on the mountains; rye cut; grass ripening; goldfinch and cedar birds nesting; first thistles in bloom; meadow lilies hanging their flame-colored bells above the grass; here and there in wet woods they have peculiar charm seen at a distance; large flying grasshoppers; first cicada; harvest apples.- Thompson says that in Africa dogs do not bark nor cows low; he thinks because of the danger from lions and other wild animals. - The water from the sprinkling cart raises a dust. - An addition of fuel checks the fire. - [crossed out: a] The slackened boat is tossed by its own swells. - A sleeper is disturbed by his own snoring.July 22nd Still cool and autumnal like - How different the feeling and purpose with which I sit down to read the bible from that with which father and grand-father sat down to read it. I sit down to read it as a book, a curious and instructive legend, and to suck the literary value out of it; they sat down to read it as the authentic word of God; to learn [crossed out: his] Gods will toward them, and to feed their souls upon the spiritual riches it contains. It was a solemn and devout exercise with them; with me it is simply a search after truth and beauty, in a mood more critical than devout. Yet I cannot help it; I cannot read it otherwise. I cannotbelieve the Bible in the way that father and his father believed it. It would be hypocrisy to pretend I could. This reading of it was the best for them, and is not my reading of it the best for me? There is perhaps more religion in the eye with which I read nature, than there was in the eye with which they read it; and there is more religion in the eye with which they read the Book than in mine. Father and mother no more doubted the literal truth of the Bible than they doubted the multiplication table; they knew it to be true; their own experiences told them so. Experience was their guide and test, not reason; and there is no more fallacious guide in such matters than experience. By experiencepeople believed in witches and spooks and signs and wonders etc. When people began to reason about witches, belief in witchcraft ended. When you begin honestly to reason about the Bible, and to exclude all feeling, experience, and sentiment, you cannot [crossed out: to] believe it other than a great primitive book - the greatest, perhaps, because the most human. The [crossed out: inspired] word of God truly, as all good and wise books are the word of God, as every wise word ever spoken by man is the word of God. The Bible is naked, as it were; faces entirely toward God, eternity, etc., whereas other books face toward the world, or towards man etc. Its burden is God, righteousness, etc. There is no pride of letters here - no pride, but only fear, awe, and worship. It transcends all otherbooks so much in this respect that we have come to look upon it as a record of God's word - an exceptionally inspired book. It is full of error, of course, full of human infirmities, but it is [crossed out: flod] flooded with the sentiment of God, and the aspiration of the soul toward the Infinite; and this is the main matter. It has been productive of great evil as well as good. It is not science, but fable, parable, imagination, ecstasy, etc. Experience, I say, is not a safe guide in certain regions. Self-delusion is so easy; it is so easy to fall into the error of looking upon our private likes and dislikes as decrees of the Eternal, true and binding on all men. The believer knows that God speaks to him through the Bible, therefore the Bible is literally true, the miracles and all. People experience over and over what they call religion; with many it is merely a mental excitement and exaltation of feeling, and is transient; with a few it results in a real change of heart and of life. But I never knew a man who was addicted to lying or to cheating ever to be cured of it by [crossed out: ?] experiencing religion. He will lie and cheat still. The scolding wife scolds still. But habits of swearing and Sabbath-breaking, are often broken up. An honest man and a good neighbor is honest still, whether he "gets" religion, or not; and the fool is not cured of his folly. We are not at all affected in our likes and dislikes of people by their failure to "get religion", and probably God is not.A sinner with large charity, an open heart and hand [crossed out: ???] is more acceptable to Gods and men than the righteous man without charity. - The things that count with us after all are love, good will, sincerity, truthfulness, and by no means what the world calls religion. It is readily said that a man cannot have religion without love, good will, truthfulness, but if he have these, we need ask no further and that the church can help him to these, admits of serious doubt. A man who is honest through fear or compulsion, is not the man I want to deal with.- Some people are not susceptible of much culture. Some of the most learned men have little culture; it all stops with the memory and does not reach the spirit. The person who remembers the most of the book he reads, is probably influenced the least by it; its words stick in his memory, but its spirit fails to sink into his heart. 22. Wood-thrush, purple finch, wren, gold-finch, indigo bird, song sparrow, swamp sparrow, social sparrow, water thrush, tanager, still in song. In the Catskills the hermit thrush and winter wren sing all this month. But after midsummer the songs of most birds greatly deteriorate.That of the wood thrush and purple finch, I note, are much less brilliant and melodious than in May. As the plumage fades, the song fades also. - Resuming my remarks upon father's religion, and the religion of people like him: experience was a safe guide for him to go by; no other guide was possible for him; the clear light of reason he did not have; for him to have seen the Bible and the Church with my eyes would have been disastrous in the extreme; it would have been like blotting the sun from heaven; he would have had nothing to lean upon, nothing to give him joy or religious satisfaction. The avenues through which my spiritual nature [crossed out: is satisfied] is ministered towere closed to him, or were never opened. To have robbed [crossed out: he] him and mother of their hymnbook, of their faith, of their Bible, would have been the greatest cruelty. Their hymns that [crossed out: ?] are so flat and prosy, or else vulgar to me, were precious beyond words to them. How quickly they could give the reason for it, quoting the Scriptures about the carnal mind, etc, but of course this is not the true explanation. Their minds were much more carnal than mine. They had no taste, no culture, no ideality to satisfy, (these they would have called carnal and irreligious), but only the one thought of their soul's salvation, meaning salvation from some threatened evil in some future world. Their belief, their religion, was not disinterested. Yet I think ofthem with inexpressible love and yearning, wrapped in the last eternal sleep, the sleep of which they thought so often, and for which they tried to be so well prepared. And prepared they were; no harm can befall them; they had for them the true religion, the religion of serious, simple, hard-working, god-fearing lives. To believe as they did, to sit in their pews, is impossible to me; the Time-Spirit has decreed otherwise; but all I am, or can be, or can achieve, is in emulating their virtues. My soul can only be saved by a like truthfulness and sincerity. - How incredible that one's parents can pass away, that they are not permanent like the sun and stars!- Cool mid-summer. Thinking very often of father and mother these days; seem to see them, or some suggestion of them, wherever I turn. The first midsummer I have not passed at the old home for several years. - Up to certain grade of intelligence, I consider it a good sign if a man belongs to the Church. Then there is a higher grade in which belonging to the church implies a certain hypocrisy of insincerity. An intelligent, disinterested seeker of the truth cannot be found inside the Church in these days. - The newspaper gives currency to all manner of flippancies, levities, irreverences, ephemeries; its tendency is undoubtedly to beget a shallow, gossipy, loud, tonguey, irreverent type of mind. In the course of generations, the most serious consequences must flow from it - elephantiasia of the lip and tongue, metaphorically speaking. 29 Still cool with plenty of rain and now our measure is to heaped. Began raining last night and this morning a steady, heavy rain from the S.E. An old fashioned rain; the air all white with it; the gray rainy river with smooth dark streaks here and there; the farmer stands in his barn beside his half-filled hay-mow with his coat on, and looks out into the drenched meadows. - Only one or two feeble notes of the cicada yet heard; too cool for them. - Rousseau says "I in a measure dull the edge of grief in advance; the more I suffer in anticipation of it, the greater is the facility with which I forget it." Rousseau was in many respects like a bee drowned in his own honey. His imagination swamped him. - Speaking of nature, botany, etc., Rousseau says the ignorant "see nothing in detail, because they know not what to look for; nor do they perceive the whole, having no idea of the chain of connectionand combination that overwhelms the mind of the observer with wonder. He said of himself that he knew little enough to make the whole world new to him, and yet possessed knowledge enough to make him sensible of the beauties of all the parts. p 396. II "Behavior lawless as snowflakes" is from Rousseau. "Leisure-Studies" a good tile for one of my books, or chapters July 31st Start for Phoenicia on the 6:45 am train to meet Aaron for a trip to the woods. We start for head of Snyder Hollow at 11 a.m. Sprits of rain all the way. Reach Larkins, the upper inhabitants, at 1 p.m. amid quite heavy rain. We bring up at the barn. Larkin comes out and invites us to the house, but Aaron prefers the barn and the hay mowRain stops near night and I take enough trout for our breakfast. Mrs L. gets us some dinner. We sleep on the hay mow, and Mrs L. does not feel complimented that we prefer the hay mow to her feather beds. In the morning fry our fish [crossed out: on her] and make our coffee on her stove and eat in the barn, in front of the ox stall, the soldier in Aaron asserting itself once more. Make camp Aug 1st and take lots of trout. Play the old game of camping out and sleeping on hemlock boughs till Tuesday, August 5th Have a good time; must try to write it up. Aug 5th break camp and reach home at 7 p.m. on boat. Aug 6. Large, lucid, tranquil Aug. day; the grass fresh and green from frequent showers.Aug 8. What is your scheme of religion, your conception of this universe, as a theatre upon which God acts the drama of the salvation of man, in the presence of the facts and deductions of astronomy and geology? How these sciences take the conceit out of us. Man and his history becomes a mere episode, the ephemera of an hour like flies in summer. 10 Cool and overcast for past three days. Orioles pecking and destroying every ripe peach, mellow apple, and pear on my trees. These birds must look out. My gun will get its round black eye upon them if they don't beware. - Keeping to quite general terms, one may say that a great writer must have two things - namely, great power of thinking and great powers of expression. Some writers have onesome the other; a few have both. Did Emerson have both? That he had great powers of expression no one will deny; that he was a great thinker many will deny. His thinking lacked consecutiveness, the tie of logic; but it seldom lacked profundity; it always carried him through to high and safe grounds. Without the method of the philosopher he reached the best conclusions of philosophy. He carried the difficult problems by sallies of the mind rather than by siege. Hence the bright and aerial character of his page; it is the bird's view of the landscape rather than that of the traveler. Goethe was a more logical thinker, but not a safer or more profound. There are great thoughts in E's page, if not great thinking.Aug 11. One year ago today I and father walked over the hill to the old house his father built and where his youth was passed - the last walk we ever took together in this world, and the only time we ever entered the old house together that I can remember. Placid river, placid day. The boughs gently wag, the bees make lines through the air. The passing boats make a great commotion in the water - convert it from a cool, smooth shadowy surface to one pulsing and agitated. The pulsations go shoreward in long rolling shadows.Aug 12. [crossed out: Go to] Start for Marion this afternoon to visit the Gilders. 20th. Home from Marion today. Passed a week with the G's, a pretty good time. - Religion according to the conventional notion, is something miraculous - something entirely apart from life, from nature, from all that is necessary and inherent in [crossed out: life] man and things; something without which the best, bravest, most virtuous man may live and die. The antique world, the towering bards and sages of Greece had it not, the time was not yet ripe, the Almighty had not yet perfected his plans. Can anything be more preposterous and repulsive? I meet persons daily who turn a practicalreasonable, common sense side to life, to events, and things; but who, the moment the subject of religion is broached execute a partial summersault and stand on their heads, seeing everything in false relation: reason, common sense, no longer prevail; they seem to contemplate a condition of things arbitrary, artificial, preposterous, where miracles instead of law prevail. Truly are these things hidden from the natural man; it is only the unnatural man to whom they are revealed, as every lunatic is convinced of things that are preposterous enough to sane people.Sept. 1st A bright, cool placid day, very green and fresh, the 3rd, 4th, 5th, very hot, 90 in shade. 11. Very hot yet, from 94 to 96 under my old apple tree since the 4th. The hottest 7 consecutive days Ihave ever seen here. My time pretty empty; no thoughts, little reading (Herodotus and Stuart Mill). Some occupation as path master on the road. My Mothers birthday. Sept 20. Bright and cool: nearly a frost last night. Mrs B and Julian start for Delaware this morning. Mrs B. in a state of mind as usual. One of the most unwifely of women. The only attitude she seems capable of assuming toward her husband is either one of affected babyishness, or of insolent domineering. The attitude of deference, respect, love, obedience is as far from her as the moon. In nearly all her relations with me and with others, she is the proverbial cow that kicks over the milk.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1884-1885
Text: 1884 Sept 20. Go out to Roxbury today. Walk up to Hiram's in the rain. Smith,and Emma there. In the afternoon go out to Homer Lynches. 21 [crossed out: 2] A bright day; find a swarm of bees in an old pine stub. I pull off the outer shell of the stub with my hands and rout a deer mouse whose nest is beneath it, made almost entirely of the feathers of the ruffed grouse. Then a few inches of dry decayed wood which rattles down like red ashes; then sound wood again, through which we cut our...
Show more1884 Sept 20. Go out to Roxbury today. Walk up to Hiram's in the rain. Smith,and Emma there. In the afternoon go out to Homer Lynches. 21 [crossed out: 2] A bright day; find a swarm of bees in an old pine stub. I pull off the outer shell of the stub with my hands and rout a deer mouse whose nest is beneath it, made almost entirely of the feathers of the ruffed grouse. Then a few inches of dry decayed wood which rattles down like red ashes; then sound wood again, through which we cut our way with the ax for 3 or 4 inches when the cavity is reached that contains the bees; we cut through the nest of a Colony of large black ants also; they have honeycombed the solid wood, and probably sucked the bees honey combs, too, as there is only an ounce or two of honey in a large lot of comb. The bees had unwittingly taken up their abode surrounded by the chambers of these large wolfish ants, and the ants had robbed them. September 23 [crossed out: 4] Go to Edens today, Homer takes us in the afternoon. Weather mild. Eden not well. Pass nearly a week at Edens, wander about his farm with a curious sad interest; all his fields seem near to me; thoughts of father and mother and of the old house Eden has left, perpetually in mind. How interested, how deeply concerned they would be in all his doing and be-longings!They were here once, several years ago, and stayed all night with Mr. Odell. I should think even that would be some comfort to Eden - the fact that his father and mother had once slept in the house he now owns and looked out over the fields that are now his. Probably it is; I should like to know if it ever comes to his mind. A good farm, and very and pleasing about the house, especially the little spring brook that murmurs by and has its hidden way beneath his front door yard. Its voice comes through my window in the morning when I wake up. All day Julian courts and woos the little brook and detains it in his little ponds. How a boy likes a brook! how a man, too. He builds tiny wharves and launches tiny ships upon his ponds26. A day of great beauty; all the forenoon upon the hills bee-hunting; find a swarm in a large maple on the side of the mountain - on their track three days before I follow them home. The day not merely bright but radiant, full of glory. I look down upon Edens house and farm from the highest fields at the head of the valley. How many dairy farms with their groups of painted farm buildings I can see - all comfortable homes. 'Tis a region of overshot barns. Every farmer's ambition seems to be to have a bigger barn than his neighbor; some barns 100 feet long. Many Canada violets in bloom, [crossed out: some of the] all very fragrant, also a blue violet, and a strawberry blossom. In the afternoon go a fishing [crossed out: Ede] Ed and Julian and I, downalong the winding, loitering river for bass and suckers. Take a fine lot, with a few trout that did not know the law was up on trout. What a day! Still, restful, the very air luminous. I have to pause and regard the day as one presses a rose to his nose; all the maple trees in the valleys burning. 27 Cloudy and windy. Over the mountain with Eden fox hunting. No fox, but wide views of the country. On our return pause a while in his sap-bush and probably both think what we do not speak of the sap bush where we made sugar as boys. 28 A warm day. I have filled the air with bees; they hover about the house and finally gather in swarms in the wood house where a little honey stands.29 Eden takes me over home to-day. In the afternoon I go up on the old "Clump" and with long long thoughts look the landscape over. The Smith homestead looks especially sad to me - Mrs. S, to whom I bade farewell last spring, is there no more; in her grave since the last day of June. 30 To Olive to-day; pass the night with father North; the old man tries to be brisk yet, but age weighs him down. Still saws and splits his own wood. Oct 16. Oct. warm and fine so far, slight showers, little or no frost. Wells and springs drying up. - Muskrats building their houses for some days.20 - Must write an essay on the value of the Sense of Reality to the literary man. Indeed, only those in whom this sense is strong, whether poets or prose writers, ever achieve any lasting work. A lively and intimate sense of things and to convey this sense in words so that the reader shares it with you, is at the bottom of all literary success. Think of this sense in Dante! To be real - to have real impressions and emotions and not feigned ones! It is closely allied to being sincere. 21st Soft, warm, brooding day. Air full of smoke; a smell of burning peat. Some maples a flaming orange. Grasshoppers still snapping here and there. Domestic skies black and thundery.Oct 26. Occupied these days in correcting and revising proof of my essay on Carlyle for the new book; also in reading Froude's last volumes. Can't get the essay in shape to suit me. October a fine month with but slight rains. Nov 3rd A day of great calmness and beauty after a full-orbed moonlight night. A day as Carlyle said like silk, or silk-plush, soft, caressing. The spaces all fleecy with vapor and smoke. A day I hope that leads in the Indian summer.9 How Science does break in upon the sort of private and domestic view of the universe that our theologians have held. It fairly turns us out into the cold and to face the eternities and infinities of time and space. We are no longer cosily housed in pretty little anthropomorphic views of things. The universe is no longer a theatre constructed for the drama of mans life and salvation. Man becomes the mere ephemera of an hour, like insects of summer. In an hour of the summer of the earth's geologic history he appears, and in an hour he is gone; a few hours more all is gone and the earth itself is frozen into the everlasting death and night of the winter of the solar system. Science says in just so many words that "there is no reason to deny the final cessation of the sun's activity, and the consequent death of the system." Carlyle said that pretty much all that science had done so far was to enable usto get rid of Moses" - the Mosaic account of creation. Yet men of great egoism, of strong anthropomorphic tendencies, like Carlyle, and Walt Whitman, must still see the universe as kind of theatre made to bring man out, and have him strut his little hour. "Oh what is man that thou does magnify him, or the son of man that thou are mindful of him!" [In margin, in pencil: "incorrectly quoted"] 4 Election Day. Rain, rain, To the defeat of Blaine! Vote for Cleveland. Ah, me! a pretty bitter pill. Never before voted for a Democratic candidate for president, but shall do so again if I live, and the Democrats take the stand on a tariff for revenue only. High production has had its day. Let our manufacturies sink of swim now; the people should no longer be taxed to buoy them up.84 Nov 6. - If I can look with complacency upon the eternity past, when I was not here, when I existed only potentially, I can look with complacency upon the eternity to come when I shall not be here, when I shall exist only in the memory of nature. The past concerns me just as much as the future. An immortality that begins is not immortality. How curious and unscientific the notion that the body is a tenement and the soul the tenant, that moves in and out, that sustains only the relation of temporary occupant to it, and may and does exist after the tenement is in ruins. I am compelled to believe that the soul and the body are one, that they are not separable; that the soul is just as dependent upon the body as the flame of the lamp upon the wick and the oil. It is a flame, more subtle than any fire and requires fuel to feed it. When the lamp goes out, or is extinguished where is the flame? No where. A process has been stopped, a physical or chemical change has been arrested. Neither heat, nor light, nor electricity, nor force can exist apart from material conditions. The soul is not material; neither is the force exerted by a magnet material, but both are absolutely dependent upon material condi-tions, are in fact the result of material conditions. The principle of Life, that which makes the body and makes the soul too, and which is, as it were, latent in all nature - that is the final and [crossed out: inter?] profound mystery. The correlation of forces explains much.I look upon all the religions of the world as devices of man to cheer and sustain himself in his journey through time. His [crossed out: notions] hopes of immortality light up the appaling darkness and coldness of the grave; with this lure he nerves himself to face it. Have we ever thought that we are probably under the same illusion with regard to "future life that we are under with reference to so much in this world - the illusion of distance. Would or could a future life seem any more an end and fulfillment in itself than this life does? Should we not [crossed out: need] still see a more desirable and perfect life in the distance and postpone present joys till a greater morrow?Nov 9. Sunday - Bright, sharp November days - gilt edged truly, the morning and the evening being remarkably brilliant. Leaves all off the maples, but clinging yet to the oaks, which are a deep russet, and to the apple trees, which are quite green. The time of the husking of the corn. In every cornfield there is a rattling of shucks, and piles of golden ears, or waiting wagons being filled with them. The days bring but few thoughts to me; my thoughts have not begun to fly yet; probably there are not many to fly. I keep an eye on the horizon there [crossed out: but] and seize my pen on the first indication, but the game is insignificant. Finished aid sent off yesterday the proof of the chapter on Carlylein my new book (Fresh Fields) yesterday. Chapter too long and in many ways unsatisfactory. 16. A week of genuine Indian summer just passed, glorious days all of them, a veil of soft vapor and smoke over the faces of each; the last two without a cloud, and without wind, the great sails all but motionless on the river; the nights full of stars. All the week in P. examining the banks - a steady grind between the upper and nether millstones of bank ledgers. I am not a good bank examiner, and never shall be; I am very slow to see the point in such matters; it is all painful to me and therefore it is not my proper work18 The halcyon days continue. The halcyon broods upon the land and upon the water. All is peace. To Saugerties to-day. The mountain dim behind a thick veil of blue haze. 19. The halcyon fled; a blast from the north rattled the windows all night. The veil torn away; the mountains stand out clear and sharp. 20. Snow and cold. The halcyon has laid her egg, and it is white and freezing. Behold what was getting ready there behind these Indian Summer days. A young winter, three inches of snow and hail.21 I am quite persuaded that my family is Welsh and pure Celtic. Much that Renan, in his recollections of his youth, says of himself comes home to me. Especially his confessions of the family weaknesses. He speaks of his absolute inability to be resentful, or to appear so as an inherited trait. It is a trait of my family and of me. I cannot harbor resentment, and I often think it is one of my cardinal weaknesses. I cannot get mad and keep so. If a person called me a [crossed out: lyer] liar, I probably should not feel half the resentment I ought to feel; and it is the same with the rest of the family. No slight or neglect, or offence, indignity even [crossed out: ?] touched father, [crossed out: he was]the same with my brothers; we do not know when we have been insulted; and when we feel hurt, it is almost impossible for us openly to resent it. Is it a Celtic trait? Not an Irish one certainly! Renan says if his ancestors engaged in any kind of trade or commerce, they were sure to get cheated. It is so with us. We can never ask enough for [crossed out: f] what we have to sell. The fact that it is ours seems to depreciate it in our eyes; it ought not to bring quite as much as other people's. We have no cheek at all. He says also that his people lacked decision of character. That is a weakness of me and of my family. We are slow to reach a decision and are easily turned.- I wonder if Renan is not too literary, too entirely under the sway of the literary and artistic spirit. One seems to feel that the underlying master impulse of all should not be literary, but moral or scientific, in other words, should be entirely serious. Renan writes eloquently and suggestively, but after all one feels that the chief thing about him is his literary and artistic faculty - that he is not a great person, a great character - no deep conviction. One would hardly expect to be helped by him or be furthered in any direction. Probably all the characteristically French critics like Renan and St Beuveseem to lack something to us who have fed on [crossed out: the] English literature. Is it moral fibre and moral purpose they lack? They lust after fine phrases; they revel in the disinterested; their end and aim is the artistic. The greatest writer serves life, serves truth and art; art follows him and gathers up and makes much of what he drops. Much as one blames Victor Hugo, he is yet entirely serious and the art impulse in him waits upon something deeper. Rousseau is more serious than Renan, though far less wise, far less Catholic. The way to serve an art is to serve nature. Romanticism [crossed out: nourish not] may be thy mistress, but not thy wife. Thoucanst not beget good healthy children upon her; she will bring thee no conquerers, but only sickly wide-eyed dreamers. The ideal may be pursued only through the real; in that direction and not in the other the path of the creator lies. The great writer sets out to portray great passions, great characters, great events; love of the real and mastery over it lies at the bottom of all his successes. The French school, now so extensively imitated by our own writers, sets out to display the commonplace artistically - hard and lean, service of mere art, no depth of any kind; not one trait of greatness. Arnold has purposes ulterior to art, ulterior to literature,he serves a higher master than either, and his work is all the more welcome to literature on that account. How serious was Millet; love of the real thing and not mere love of the picture of the thing, is at the bottom of his success; and so of all the great ones, whether poets, novelists, artists, or historians. 22. Indian summer again in the sky but winter upon the ground. Sold some honey to Dick Atkins and Julian and I put it on a sled this morning and ran across the fields over the crust with it to his house. It was a pretty little idyl, a sled loaded with clover honey and [crossed out:we] us running with it through the soft sunshine, over the hard snow.- Some English reviewer says that the two British writers of the present day whose works are pre-eminent for the quality of style, are Morley and Newman. Of Newman this is true, but of Morley it is far less true than of Arnold. Arnold has unmistakably the subtle something we call style, and Morley has it not, or has it in far less measure, and far less pervasively. The difference between the two writers [crossed out: to use a homely illustration, is just the difference between a shot gun and a rifle.] is very marked. Morley is versatile and discursive, he covers a good deal of ground, and he often does rare execution, but he never plucks the heart of the matter out in just the way Arnold does.His aim is not so nice; he has not the simplicity and directness of Arnold. His vocabulary is more copious; more matters are touched upon; but he scatters too much for a writer of the first order. His essay on Emerson, for instance has not the proportion, simplicity, [crossed out: and telling] the rifle quality that Arnolds has. His thoughts are not so well disciplined and subordinated; the emphasis is not so neatly and surely put through each one of Arnolds essays there runs one main idea, which is indeed like a bullet. And the way, too, he hits the mark with a single phrase and hits it in the center is far beyond the power of Morley. Many of his phrases are so central and so illuminating that theybecome permanent acquisitions to criticism. They classify and distribute a vast deal of loose matter. Indeed Arnold has the eye of a great classifier, the type of the thing around which the parts are arranged [crossed out: are] is seen unfailingly. One of the most remarkable things about Arnold is just this central and sure-hitting [crossed out: power] quality. There is no waste of power in him; every bit tells and tells upon the heart of the matter. He is classical, not merely from culture, but from Nature; his joints are supple and firmly knit; his style is strong in the back and loins; in other words strong, as proportion and simplicity are always strong. There is, in my opinion, no other current British writer, who givesone anything like, the quality of style Arnold does. Ruskin is a brilliant and suggestive writer, but after all as Carlyle said he is a weak man; he is flighty and capricious. Whatever one may think of Arnold [crossed out: one] he cannot say he is a weak man; he is well knit together and has himself well in hand. He gives one no sense of weakness and disproportion as Ruskin does; and he is not a "trifler in Cadenas" like Landor. Carlyles fiery and consuming mantle has not fallen upon any English writer, but Arnold has scorn and contempt of existing things, with much more tact and urbanity. He is a Carlyle begotten by the great schoolmaster [crossed out: to Arnold] of Rugby, and cast in theclassic mould, shorn and bleached a good deal, but still full of savage and fearless criticism. 22 A lover of books in a book-store plays around and half nibbles at the books as a wary trout coquettes with the bait. He is perchance not in the mood or temper to bite. He does not quite want the book or books. Some day he comes in again and suddenly strikes the bait. The lure he had kicked at before he eagerly seizes now.[written in margin: see "Egotistical Chapter." - p.274] 23. One important thing in writing is to divest yourself of any false, or accidental mood, or view or feeling, and get down to your real self and speak as directly and sincerely as you do about your daily business and affairs and with as little affectation. One may write from the outside of his mind, as it were, write and write, learnedly and eloquently, and make no impression; but when he speaks from real insight and conviction of his own, men are always glad to hear him whether they agree with him or not. Get down to your real self - your better real self and let that speak. Ones real self is always vital and gives theimpression of reality. So much writing and speaking is like machine work. The Sunday sermon and the leading editorial - [crossed out: are] generally a piece of machine work, as if you turned a crank and the discourse came out. It is not the mans real mind, his real experience. He does not know how to get at this; all is artificial, factitious; his garden is upon the house top instead of upon the ground; his ideas have no root, no succulency, no flavor. He speaks from art, from culture, from facility, and not from inspiration. How rare are real poems! poems that spring from real feeling, a real throb of emotion, and not from [crossed out: a] the mere [crossed out: itching of] itch of literary vanity.The great mass of the poetry of any age is purely artificial, a tour-de-force, the sheer result of effort. It dates from the outside; it is in the air, from the friction of much reading, or a superficial knack at rhyme. No wonder the public gets suspicious of poetry and refuses to buy it. It is for the most part-counterfeit coin. [crossed out: The poetic forms] It is a kind of masquerading. The poetic forms are masks behind which the writers hide their real [crossed out: want] poverty of thought and of feeling. In prose a man has no such factitious aids; here if he has nothing to say he is quickly found out; he must stand or fall for what he is; he has not the cloak ofMilton or Spenser or Tennyson or Virgil to hide in. We are so overlaid with culture and literature and conventionalities that it is difficult to get at our real selves. There is as it were an artificial deposit over all our minds, we cannot get at the virgin mould but we must get at it or no work or poem, or picture is of any value. This, for one reason, is why I value Whitman: we touch the native soil here; there is the smell of the mould in the spring woods, something fresh and audacious. Whitman is sincere. He does not speak out of the air, but out of his very loins, his very physiology.In my own case, in my efforts outside my chosen field of natural history, I often find I have not spoken my real mind, or from any proper basis of insight and conviction, but from a fancy or a love of novelty, or affectation of originality. The strange things, the novel things are seldom valuable or true. Look for truth under your feet - A young writer makes many discoveries, but how stale and worthless they seem him by and by.Nov 26. To New Haven to-day via Armenia and Dover Plains and NY. Wife and J with me. 27. Went to hear Dr. Newman Smyth to-day. Not a man of genius and eloquence, but of very solid and clear talent Prof Beers and Prof Lounsbury call upon me; both rather fine fellows. Beers a slight man with a rather big voice, a slight incongruity here. Lounsberry a larger man with a smaller, higher keyed voice, but more in keeping with his look and quality than that of Beers. 29 New book "Fresh Fields" out today. Dec 3. An all day tramp with Prof Eaton off to Lake Saltinstall. Eaton a large hearty fellow with rather a fine toneto him; on his knees examining the mosses, sometimes flat on his belly; his eye glasses falling from his nose just as he gets ready to look. These mosses are a world by themselves, a lilliputian world, yet very ancient - the second step probably in the vegetable life of the globe. Eaton knows them all, and brought home many specimens. He said Torrey and Drummond were one day walking in the woods by West Point when Terry said "I have never seen so and so"; "Never seen so and so" said D with scorn, and stooped and plucked the moss [crossed out: free] at their very feet. Glorious days, a steady Indian summer for a week.4th To [crossed out: leave] Phila. to see Walt Whitman. Found Walt and Dr. Bucke at Greens Hotel Walt looks well as usual, and seems to be so. The grain of him yet seems sound and good; though perhaps a little more inclined to a purpleish tint at times, than I had noticed before. Dr Bucke a large man with a broad long head, of choleric temperament mainly; voice rather hard and harsh, brow with a nervous pucker, whole look rather harsh and intense. Pass the night all of us at Mrs Smiths, a rich quaker family in Germantown; a fine hospitable family; a long drive next morningin the Park; then to Phila. dine together and part at 4 p.m. Walt says his opinions about our poets fluctuate a good deal. He used to place Emerson first, then Bryant and Longfellow, etc. He puts them [crossed out: th] in this order, Bryant, Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow. He has much to say in praise of Bryant - tho did not like his poem on death. But praised the "Winds" and such poems. Walt is writing a long Preface for his poems and has many ups and down about it. One day thinks it a good idea, and the next thinks it too much like a concession that his poems should be taken as they are without any argumentor explanation, like the works of nature. He seemed anxious to hear what I had to say about it. I told him it was a secondary matter; that the poems would have to stand or fall on their own merits; as time went on his preface would be dropped if it had nothing important in it; and if it was necessary to the poems, it would be retained. I said write it, if you feel you have something valuable to say, and let it take its chances; it can neither make nor break. He said as he grew older, he thought less of Burns and more of Tennyson.7th A very heavy rain last night, with thunder. Warm today, bees out of the hive and working on honey. 9 Gray, quiet, October like days. The thunder scared the frost and the cold away. - Emerson is full of abstract poetry; not so much the concrete in him, as something abstracted from the concrete. Is there such a thing as abstract religion, abstract friendship? Thoreau cherished a kind of abstract friendship. - Swinburne's poetry nearly always seems to me like a parody.That disgusting lust for lilt and ripple and alliteration - it is almost unclean.- G. at Marion goes teetering about as frivolous as a bird; fails to give one any sense of solidity and seriousness, he lacks under jaw. - Over and over I say that to put the great personal qualities in poetry, not formulated or didactically stated, but in breath of view, charity, attitude, etc, is the great triumph. So put they are a possession to the race forever. They grow perennially like the grass and the trees. The poems of whitman, Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, alone of our poets, breathe great personal qualities.- A great many of our religious notions and beliefs are like the institution of Sunday - they reach only half way around the Earth. - "There is a point of perfection in Art" says La Bruyere, "as there is of goodness and ripeness in nature; he who feels and loves it has perfect taste; he who feels it not who loves something beneath or beyond it has faulty taste." - Science is a capital or fund perpetually re-invested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon; to set himself up in business with. What an enormous fund Darwin inherited and re-invested! Not so in literature: to every poetto every artist it is still the first day of creation. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new grown. You must sow the seed and reap the harvest yourself - In poetry science must not be presented as fact to the mind, but as feeling. or symbol to the imagination. In such a poet as W.W. it is flooded and made fluid by his enormous egoism. His human and emotional quality is so strong and penetrating, possesses such power of solubility - that science is melted by it and transmuted into feeling.- In writing of a man, a poet, or any object, the success is to give a clear, consistent and truthful image or picture of him or of it from your own point of view. I have just read a severe criticism of Carlyle in the Spectator; it is not my view. I do not accept it at all, but the writer has given a good account of himself, and has made a forcible and consistent statement from his point of view. As soon as a writer has a real point of view of his own, definite and tangible ground of his own to stand upon, he commands our respect and attention. Many writers are mere raiders, like flying bands of cavalry, with no proper base, noproper lines of attack or defense. You never know where to find them. Nearly all newspaper writing is of this kind. The leading editorial carries no conviction necause as a rule it is written from no personal and sincere conviction, its point of view is the fluctuation of politics. The born writer always has a point of view, and the more commanding his view, the greater his weight and influence. - Men and nations at war with each other and seeking to slay each other, pray to the same God for succor. How strange! they are antipodes, their feet are opposed, yet both find that they look up to the sky. One heaven is above allDec 20. The fourth anniversary of mothers death. Cold clear day 10 below zero this morning, and below all day; ice forming on the river. How the trains "siss" as if the rails were red hot. The whistle of the engine has a peculiar splayed and cracked effect. The sound seems to come through a sieve. The repeated discharges of a gun across the river - the sound hard, dissonant, suppressed, cracked - no reverberation, no echo, no free explosion, more like the slapping together of hemlock boards. Homer and Mary Jane came on Wednesday the 17th and went home yesterday. Very glad to seethem. Jane a soft, pulpy kind of woman, very tender hearted and indulgent to her children, gives them a piece of pie on going to bed if they cry for it. How the old days come back as we sit by the fireside at night talking over the past! and thinking more than we say of those whom we can see no more. Ah, father and mother, how much of life was buried with you; what a void in the world your absence makes! Jane said "old folks" looked very good to her. That is my feeling too; I turn and look fondly after every old woman I see on the street.Dec 25 - Christmas; cold; river nearly covered with floating ice; good sleighing; in my hut writing with indifferent success upon Arnold - find it very hard to encompass him, and state him, define him, without praise or blame. The critic should confine himself to description and elucidation. He shall praise and blame only when his praise and blame throws light on his subject; when [crossed out: it] they throw light only on his personal likes and dislikes, [crossed out: it] they [crossed out: is] are not permissable. 26. Cold windy night; only 10 above this morning, and the loose snow drifting; such a morning as in my youth often kept us home from school. "It is not fit for the boys or for John to go over that hill to-day"Mother would say, "they will perish with the cold." The naked woods would roar like the sea; the snow like white smoke and flame would sweep across the hills, rising up toward the clouds in long slender tongues and spires. If we went to school we would reach it with ears nipped by the frost, heels frozen, boots frozen stiff, dinner in basket frozen and our faces red and stinging Our path of yesterday would be drifted full, and the creek buried from sight, except here and there where it would manage to keep an eye open. How the old stove would devour the wood and glow, while the corners of the room would be frigid. No playing ball or any other game such days; how it all comes back to me, the school house, the boys and girls, the teacher, and there at home, father and mother in theprime of their days! Now it is all gone, long gone, and father and mother are gone and we ourselves are getting old. A generation two removes now goes to the old red school house, and its numbers are few, hardly one fifth of that which went to school in my time. Ice stationery on the river this morning - last winter very nearly repeated. 30. Mild weather again; snow and ice going fast. - I have had to accomplish in myself the work of several generations. None of my ancestors were men and women of culture, knew nothing of books etc. I have had to begin at the stump, and to rise from rude, crude things. I have felt the disadvantagesI have labored under, as well as the advantages. The advantages are that things were not hackneyed with me, curiosity was not blunted, my faculties were fresh and eager. - a kind of virgin soil that gives whatever charm and sweetness and spontaneity my books possess, also seriousness and religiousness. The disadvantages are an ineptitude [crossed out: ness] for scholarly things [crossed out: learning, for scholarship] a want of [crossed out: freeness and] steadiness and clearness of the tone of letters, the need of a great deal of experimenting, a certain thickness and indistinctness of accent. The farmer and laborer in me, a great many generations old, is a little embarrassed in the company of scholars; has to make a great effort to remember their learned manners and terms etc.The unliterary basis is the best to start from, it is the virgin soil of the wilderness, but it is a good ways [crossed out: fro] to the college, the library, and much work must be done. I am near to nature and can write upon these themes with ease and success; this is my proper field as I well know. I am at home amid these things, but bookish themes, how I flounder about amid them, and have to work and delve long to get down to the real truth about them in my mind. In writing upon Emerson, or Arnold, or Carlyle I have to begin as it were and clear the soil, build a log hut and so work up to the point of view that is not provincial, but more ore less metropolitan. My best gift as a writer ismy gift for truth; I have a thoroughly honest mind and know the truth when I see it. I have a keen sensibility for it. My humility, or modesty, or want of self assertion, call it what you please, is also a help in bringing me to the truth. I am not apt to stand in my own light; am not apt to mistake my own wants and whims for decrees of the Eternal. At least, if I make the mistake to day, I will see my error tomorrow. I have no firmness of outline; in this respect I am a soft shelled egg, but this also helps me to come close to nature and take her form.- Why is there any more chance for the sun to exhaust itself [crossed out: if heat] than for the attraction of gravitation to exhaust itself. All bodies exert this power of attraction in all directions, but is it a waste? When it meets with no object, there is no attraction; no force is exerted. So when the rays of the sun meet with no planet there is no heat developed. Heat is of the earth, earthy, as sound is of the ear, auricular. There is no sound where there is no ear. May be there is no heat on the sun, but the cause of heat. I suggest this in the face of the spectroscope. Probably the last explanation of physics is something non-physical or transcendental.Dec 30. Noon - warm and spring like, bees out of the hive. I have never known such a breech as this in winter ever to be entirely closed up again. Winter will not recover from this defeat, and get back the ground lost to-day. He is demoralized. We shall see. Thermometer 50 on the north side of the house. In the afternoon while walking in the edge of some woods, I heard a low grating, or grunting, or squeaking sound, as if some croaking frog was just budding. I followed it up and after much waiting fixed upon the spot when the sound came from beneath the dry leaves. Scraping away the leaves, there was a small wood frog in a little spot just sunk below the surface of the ground. I took him out; he was alittle stiff and sluggish, but the frost was all out of him, and there was the bud of a croak in his throat. I replaced him in his hibernaculum and covered him up, and shall call upon him again. His body was about 1 1/2 inches long. He was very dark colored, like the ground and rotted leaves. - When a poet adopts the old forms he must use them worthily. He is like a rope dancer, when he slips off the rope we laugh or are displeased. - A great poet or artist never seeks to embody an abstraction, tho of course something can be abstracted from his work. But it is a feeling before it is an idea, and the poem is a concrete1885 and vital thing from the start. Jan 1st Cloudy with spurts of rain and snow from the north west. Snow all gone, ice broken up on the river. Temperature like November, but a cold wave coming and due to-night. Sat in my study and wrote upon Arnold. 3. Thermometer down to 7 this morning. Ground utterly bare, river partially closed again. Very still, not a breath of air stirring 5 Mild and Indian summery, not a flake of snow on the ground. Ice on the river all adrift again.- All night I skirted the shore of sleep and vainly essayed to land. But just as I neared the low tranquil beach, some fiend would cry "there, there you sleep", when back my scallop moved with a spring, and the lotus land would mock me in the distance. (- Ones anxiety to sleep always stands in the way of sleep.) Then I said I will try no more and ceased all effort, when I know not how, I slowly drifted upon the shore and presently found myself, or did not find myself, in the land of dreams. I knew I had been there only because the fragrance of the land was upon me in the morning, and some memory of what I had seen.Jan 1885 7 Much rain yesterday and last night. Soft, warm to-day like spring or fall. Not even the "heel" of a snowbank to be seen. Tis a year to-night that father had his stroke. How surely the present and the future become the past, and how surely the past becomes sacred - the cemetery of our days - Every few days, especially in the winter evenings, the feeling comes strongly upon me that I am away from home, that I am only detained here, and that I must go back to the old place and slacken my thirst at the old home fountains once more. While Father and Mother were living the feeling was especially strong at times, but I thought that after they were gone itwould cease. But it does not. It still seems at times as if I must go back there to live; as if I should find shelter there; as if I should find the old content-ment and satisfaction in the circle of those hills. But I know I should not; the soul's thirst can never be slackened. Mine is a hunger of the imagination. Bring all my dead back again and place me amid them in the old home, and a vague longing and regret would still possess me. 8. Still mild - bees-out-of-the-hive weather; no frost in the ground. 11 Colder, mercury down to 20 degrees this morning. Getting ready for snow.- The stages of an orb's life, say the astronomers, are stages of cooling. So are the stages of a man's life. It is a process of cooling and hardening from youth to age. The gassy, nebular youth out of which the man is gathered together and consolidated! Fiery, strong, vapery, at first; then cold, hard, impoverished at last. - The amelioration or evolution of the earth from the early geological ages, when it was at most a hot, barren rock, to its present condition of deep fruitful soil, [crossed out: rich] wealth of grass and verdure and animal life etc is no more marvellous than the evolution of man from the lowest forms of life, to his present high position.Jan 12. Warm copious rains like April and May, coming off fair, by 10 o'clock. Another bee day. Thermometer - One can drink hot water or cold water, but not luke-warm. Faint praise is luke-warm water; give it to us either hot or cold, my impartial reviewers! 17. I suppose what takes me in Whitman is just what would repel Arnold - namely, the nearness of the man, the close proximity to the reader of a living breathing person, so near that one can almost hear his heartbeat. Whitman has not clothed and veiled himself in his art, as poets generally do. He early said that he wouldhave no curtains, not the finest, between himself and his reader, and he has kept his promise. The taste of the age finds him too rank, too personal, [crossed out: they] it cannot make poetry out. of such a near and rankly human presence. Indeed, for personality as such there is little taste or power to judge in current criticism, "But the fact is" as Goethe says "in the great work the great person is always present as the great factor; only to appreciate the presence of a great somebody in any work of genius, the person who would appreciate must himself be a somebody."- "Without the sublime" says Landor, "there can be no poet of the first order." This is certainly true. The sublime is not possible to Longfellow or to Whittier, or Holmes. Is it possible to Emerson and Bryant? I think it is to Emerson; he often reaches something like the moral sublime, the heroic. If Bryant attains to the sublime, it is the sublime of natural scenery. He probably does in a few poems, like The Flood of Years, Thanatopsis and so on. To Whitman, of all American poets, the sublime comes the easiest. The sentiment of grandeur is native to him. Whitman is a great personality. Landor further says that a poet of the first order must have formed, or taken to himself and modified some great subject. What American poet, besides Whitmanhas found or taken to himself a great subject. - Of one thing I am fully persuaded, and that is that if a man can live without God in this world, he can live without God in any world, or in any state of being. When our friends die, we say in our grief and bewilderment that they have gone to God, that they are with God, but in no sense can they be with God more intimately than in this life, and in this world. There is no living or being without God in any world or state. - Julian looks up from, his book and says, "Papa, the men that go to heaven don't have no wings; they are made lighter than the air so they go up."Jany 24. Myron came on the 20th and stayed till to-day. The old old talks again, here in the bark covered study, on the same old knotty subjects. Myron is more of an idealist, of a true Emersonian than I am. He confronts the naturalists like Spencer and Mill, and at a good many points. He will not give up his doctrine, that the soul has or may have have an independent existence. 26. To N.Y. to-day to attend the breakfast given to Edmund Gosse. Gosse is a charming fellow and easily the superior man present. I quite fell in love with him. He spoke so admirably too. The unexpected always happens, and to my dismay the chairman, Col.Warring, called me up. Of course I had nothing to say, hence my melancholy and dissatisfaction with myself to-day. Yet it is so easy to speak on such occasions after all. So little counts for so much! A farthings worth of wit will carry a man through. But I had not even a farthings worth. I shall have a contempt for myself for at least a week to come. - Wordsworth's religious belief lay in his mind as something entirely artificial; it had no vital relation to him, but was foisted upon him by his environment. It was entirely apart from his real religious feelings as he gave expression to them through his poetry.- How much better it is for a writer like me to burn his ships behind him, if he can only get up courage to do it, which generally he cannot. I am constantly beset by the demon to weave in something I have written, when if that something were burned up, [crossed out: be] I should go forward and develop something better. Feb 2nd Apparently we have struck into a streak of steady level winter weather. From 25 to 30 degrees of frost occurring pretty regularly. Snow about 10 inches now it has settled. The ice harvesting just opening.The broad white plains before my window dotted with movinghorses and men. The broad loose ridges of snow between the fields suggest fences - straggling and ragged hedge-rows of snow. The canal is being opened this morning and runs a straight broad black band directly out from the north end of the ice-house. I see the men whip their hands to warm them up. Sun dazzlingly bright. Mercury about 8 or 10 above. - Am still writing on Arnold, have my canal fairly opened and am about ready to stow away my [crossed out: ?] scattered leaves in their final shape.In reading Stedmans critical writings I seem for the most part to be trying to see objects through small chinks or holes in the wall. A good broad glimpse, or anything like a total view he never gives me. I admire this and that, and the other thing he [crossed out: gives] says, but they do not, taken as he gives them, make a picture, or give a total impression. The only thing large about Stedman is his generosity. This saves him from being a small conceited prig. It was his generosity, his manly feeling, that inspired his superb poem on [crossed out: Osawat?] old John Brown.Feb 7. Clear and cold mercury down to 6 degrees below this morning. Ice-harvest nearly perfect; ice 11 inches thick. Homer Lynch dropped in suddenly upon us last night on his ret. from N.Y. Very glad to see him again. A strictly honest, earnest, hard working man, very clear headed too on many matters, but with hard limitations on others. Lacks the influence of culture, which sort of distributes and distributes and equalizes a man's powers. He has just left and even now at 2 P.M. I see the train through my window that bears him away. The thought of Eden is with me day and night. No doubt he is going to die soon, and again I will have to look death in the face. Oh, that I could do something to prolong his days.- He had a sad wistful look as if he had just been reading old letters. Feb 10 - I have arrived at that point in life for some years now in which all things are seen as in the light of an afternoon sun. How different from the light of the first half of the day! A little faded or diluted by the vapors and with a pensive tinge. [crossed out: The day? is gone, many flowers are shut up, the birds are less musical] It is perhaps in many ways the most trying condition or period, of life, this transition state from ones prime to old age. The latter really has not yet come, but the former is also clearly on the wane. Let us hope that the land of old age when we have once really arrived there, will have its own compensations and and charm. When the sun really begins to shade the hills there is a new charm in nature, more color in the sky, more privacy and illusion on the earth. Let us hope it will be so in life. 11 Severe wind and cold; 6 degrees below this morning, and a driving wind all day. Ice 13 or 14 inches on the river. A heavy rain night before last. Have finished Arnold and am letting my timber season before putting it in final shape.Feb 19 Start for Eden's this morning early; all day on the train reach Hobart at 4 1/2 P.M. hungry and head-achey. After dinner walk up to Eden's over the snowbanks and through the deep snow. The little valley his farm occupies, as I came into it, just at sunset, looked bleak and desolate enough. Eden was just coming out of doors as I approached with two pails of feed for his hogs. He looked very pale to me, tho better than I expected fo find him, for my fears about his health had been very great. He was the same in manner and talk as of old - shows very little concern about the state of his health. We sat that night by the fire and talked till after 10 o'clock, while the ruggedest of Delaware Co winters raged without. Next day very cold, no sunshine; the airobscured by a mist of snow. Helped Hi K. and Charley Grant saw wood a little for exercise. Frank Corbin there rather silent. Poor Frank; Willie not well and nursing his health by the fire most of the time. Mag. as swift and active as usual. Five men to one woman - and her work amounts to nearly as many hours as all theirs. As I gazed through the frost-covered pane, how frigid and desolate the landscape looked! The trees on the mountain all white with hoar frost. Two nights I stayed, [crossed out: ?] may be the last I shall ever spend with Eden, but I hope for his improvement from the Lithia water I took him. My thoughts were very sad, but as I seemed to be the only sad one, I tried to shake it off. Saturday morning I left at 9 a.m. Saw Eden through the window lookingafter me as I rode off with Hi. K. Feb 21st Stop at Main's station and go up to see Jane and Homer. Ride up behind an ox team, through a whirl of snow; very cold and the roads drifted full. Take dinner with Jane and Homer and then rush back to the train at 1 o'clock. At Roxbury I leave the train and start up the hill to Abigails. She is gone over to Hiram's. I ride over on a bob-sled behind the oxen, Gurt's boy, Channy, driving. How the great oxen wallow and plunge through the drifts, rising and falling like old Neptune's steeds, though rather slower of foot. Indeed, we are at sea on a bob-sled; over fences, through fields we go, the Herculean oxen stopping at nothing.Hiram and the rest of them well, though Hiram seems rather absent minded, and was much occupied I could see with thoughts of father. It apparently comes home to him more and more, that Father is indeed forever gone, and that he must finish the rest of his days alone. Emma said that every day he went and looked at father's clothes and then at his picture. At night we went together and looked at them, and [crossed out: ?] into his chest, and handled over many of his things, How the unshed tears choked my throat! All the while I was there, it seemed as if presently some one must come out of the rooms, or in from out-doors; that the family were not all at the table, or in the kitchen, andthat the rest of them would appear presently. I looked through the frost covered panes out upon the familiar scenes as I did when a boy, but, oh! with what different emotions. Such a vision of snow and winter as one gets in this country is very impressive. You see the whole landscape at a glance, and see nothing but a snowy desolation. Monday morning again I am off for the train. Smith takes Abigail and I down to her house with the oxen, plunging through the drifts and over the fences, as before. Feb 23rd Stop off in Olive to see father North; the old man quite chipper and full of talk. Reach home at 7 1/2 at night.26 - Julian in an argumentative tone this morning when I was dressing him, "Why, Papa, something ought to become of us when our bodies are dead." 28 Last day of winter; mild, still air, full of smoke and vapor; snow deep, deep; ice 18 or 20 inches. Steady severe cold since about the 20th of Jany; as solid a piece of winter as one seldom sees, the mercury fluctuating about zero nearly all the time, often 8 or 10 below, and as often 8 or ten above. March 1st Still, dim, thawey. Quite a look and feeling of spring in the air. The crows noisy, and at times uttering that liquid musical note.Mch 2nd Shall I go West this summer? I carry such a burden of home memories and longings and regrets with me when I go abroad, that I should probably not get as close to what I want to see as I ought to make the seeing profitable. If I could only go forth eager and curious, and emancipated from all past ties, it would be worth while to go. But if I am to be mentally bed-ridden in the great free west, better stay at home. First chipmunk to-day. A good omen for an early spring. 3 First blue-bird to-day, but silent. 4 Fair and mild, much smoke and vapor in the air, promises a good day for the inauguration of Cleveland; and I hope a good augury for his administration. So far I am well pleased with all he has said and done. I have never witnessed a presidential inauguration, tho present in W when two presidents were inaugurated. Twenty years ago today at the 2nd inauguration of Lincoln I took a walk to the woods. Sixteen years ago, at the first inauguration of Grant (now, alas! in such a precarious condition) I went down town and saw the procession but did not go to the capitol. In '73 I was in Middletown; in '77 and in '81 I was here.- This great vital Nature, this life and power of the universe is the cloth out of which we cut to some particular pattern our goods. Each cuts to his own pattern and rejects all that is left. Matthew Arnold cut out that "power not ourselves which makes for righteousness". What is he going to do with [crossed out: that] what is left? with all that which does not make for righteousness? It is like selecting the Gulf Stream and calling that the ocean. What do you call the rest of the water? This is only one of the currents; there are many others. The sea as a whole does not flow to any particular point; it flows to all points, and in all directions; there are currents beneath currents. So in Nature; we cannot say what the end of Nature isGod is nothing less than the whole. If he directs any, he directs all. If he is one power not ourselves, he is every power not ourselves. The sphere bends at every point; every point is at the top, and yet no one point is at the top. When we can grasp the sphere or find the end of the circle, we can grasp this power we call God, and find when he begins and ends. "How can anyone teach concerning Alla! He is neither the Known, nor the unknown." etc. - When amid those high rugged mountains I go down into a deep valley which has a level, plane-like bottom I seem to have got down to the real surface of the sphere; here, I say, is a bit of the back of the planet. If the space was large enough one could doubtless see the planetary curve as he sees it upon the surface of the sea. 10. Good weather for the ice-boatmen Snow still about a foot deep. - In the ancient temple of Apollo at Delphi lay a stone, the omphalos or navel stone, supposed to mark the center of the Earth. And it did mark the center of the Earth. The ancients supposed the world had one center; they were not aware that every point on the surface of [crossed out: a sphere] the earth may serve as its center, because they did not know that the earth is a sphere. They probably thought it an irregular plane, tho' Thales knew better. Nearly all religious notions, both ancient and modern are thus limited and narrow. We think there is but one center of the world, when there are any number we think there is but one religion, but there may be any number of true religions. Mathematics [crossed out: are] is always and everywhere the same, but religion is a sentiment, and is as changeable, as various, and as fleeting as a summer cloud. Our navel stone is the center of the world for us, and the Buddhists on the Mohammedims is the center of the world for him, but do not let us make the mistake of supposing that there is but one center to the Infinite. The center of the world the other way, or inward, alas! that is quite another matter. Here the earth has but one center, and the center of all religions is the one and the same, namely [crossed out: a sincere belief in an invisible power greater and better than ourselves] love of God or of the Supreme Good, as we are capable of conceiving it; in other words, a sincere belief in an invisible power greater and better than ourselves. Mch 13 - Very cold again;several (7) degrees below zero this morning. Clear to-day from the north, with cutting wind. - Do I believe in the Christian religion? Certainly, I believe in all religions, the Mohammedem religion, the Budda religion, the' religion of ancient Greece, Egypt, China, etc. I believe in the essential truth they containe, that each was best for the people and the time amid which they appeared. Every religion that helps to hold its possessors up to a higher standard of virtue and goodness than they would otherwise be inclined to I believe in. But the machinery of these religions, [crossed out: what] their outward forms and plans, etc, that is another question. The historical evidences of Christianity are of course fables, myths. The events did not fall out in thisway. That there was such a person as Christ I believe, "a wise prophet and teacher", but all the rest is just as fabulous or imaginary as the signs of the Zodiac, or the constellations of Orion. The stars are there, but not Orion, not the harp, not the chair, these we feign or supply. So all the marvelous history of christ is a pretty fable, etc. 15 First song sparrows to-day, amid rain and snow. 16 First robin to-day. 17 Still rugged winter; thermometer down to 4 degrees above this morning, and down to zero at van Benschotens. 18. Still zero weather, and below zero in most places. 22. Down to or below zero nearly every morning the past week. The longest stretch of cold weather I ever saw as late in the season.- I shall live in the future, just as I have lived in the past, namely, in the life of humanity, in the lives of other men and women. When the last man perishes from the earth, then I perish - to reappear in other worlds, other systems. No doubt that man has always existed on some of the myriads of worlds of space, and no doubt he will always exist. So far as consciousness or personality is concerned this life is all. We do not know ourselves again, we do not take form again, except in others. 25 Cold weather lasted till this date when it began to abate. Ice men might have worked [crossed out: all this] up to this time, except when it was too cold.about the kettle, attracted by the savory smell. Blue-birds have selected the woodpeckers cavity in the old apple tree over our heads to nest; very jealous of an English sparrow that peeps in the hole. Meadow lark to-day with her long drawn note. A charming day 29. Four or five inches of snow last night; very wintry this morning, but now at 11 a.m. sun is shining and snow running fast, a sap snow. Bluebirds carrying nest material into the old cavity this morning. 30. Phoebe [crossed out: ?] last night and again this morning but only uttering her chip, chip. She does not call "phoebe" yet.27. A spring day at last, warm and sunny. The snow running fast. The old, old story, the old old enticement and charm. The song sparrow has endeared itself to me afresh. Everywhere about the house and grounds, on every bush and fence the sweet spring ditties arise. How touching, how mindful of home! and of the days that are no more! The robins and the blue-birds too, promptly are they here to play their parts and they play them with the same old charm. The red shouldered black birds tool a tree full of them back near the depot all uttering their willow-brook notes. It is the voice of a multitude, but March has no more welcome chorus - a great sheaf of reedy bird notes. 28 Still warm. Julian and I boil sap in the open air near the shed. Bees humming
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1885-1886
Text: April 1st Warm and delicious. The first spring chorus in full blast. All the old allurements in the air, all the old voices; blue-birds, robins, phoebes, sparrows, black birds, snow birds, crows, hawks, and, flying high overhead out of sight, a killdeer or snipe cries his disconsolate cry [crossed out: note]. Again the robins run about the brown fields their pert forms set off against the lingering patches of snow. Ice on the river begins to wear a ragged look, great rents in his coat here...
Show moreApril 1st Warm and delicious. The first spring chorus in full blast. All the old allurements in the air, all the old voices; blue-birds, robins, phoebes, sparrows, black birds, snow birds, crows, hawks, and, flying high overhead out of sight, a killdeer or snipe cries his disconsolate cry [crossed out: note]. Again the robins run about the brown fields their pert forms set off against the lingering patches of snow. Ice on the river begins to wear a ragged look, great rents in his coat here and there. Last night at 6 a great gull went northward high in the air, uttering his cry, probably looking for open water. For two or three days J and Ihave boiled sap in the open air. It was small sugaring, but it was a good taste of the old delightful occupation. The skunk cabbage in bloom yesterday, again it got ahead of me. Between 4 and 5 P.M. ice moved down the river. All the premonitary symptoms had occurred during the day. The ice was restless and shifted about within narrox limits a good deal. 2nd Mild and overcast. In the afternoon a large flock of wild geese go northward, a noble sight, a great V cleaving the air.3. My 48th birthday. How rapidly they come and go! "Little did my mother think That day she cradled me The lands I was to travel in The death I was to die" Weather mild and still; sky obscured, much vapor and smoke in the air. Snow all gone. Great fields of ice floating down. All the sparrows musical. Health pretty good; legs nearly normal, more in harmony than one year ago, no lameness in either. Occasionally symptoms of numbness in ends of toes. Right arm lame for some weeks past, left a little lame. Heart flutters occasionally, but not so often as during the winter. Am probably stronger than last birthday. Arms both better than in the winter. Am not troubled with sensations of cold in arms and legs as formerly. Ought to have been home to-day, but the snow banks out there have kept me back. The thought uppermost in all minds is the death of Genl. Grant, a brave, resolute, patriotic, unimpeachable, common-sense man, not shrewd or sharp in the worldly way; often victimized, but a noble solid character. He held together and kept his head under circumstances which broke or scattered more brilliant men. Much of pure adamant in him. How free from brag and bluster; how taciturn. I have seen him many times in W. between 1868 and 72, but I shall see him no more. P.M. Grant not dead yet.4 P.M. Warm and delicious; sit in my summer house and write this; trill of the sparrows all around; phoebe calls from under the hill; the sap clinks in the pan, the early April smell upon the air; the sound of a Good Friday bell from over the river. Attended the funeral this P.M. of Irving Dennys wife, the daughter of John Sterling; poor girl died from neglect after confinement. Seldom have I seen death conterfeit sleep more perfectly. Old Mr. Capron in his sermon told us about Paradise - an intemediate land or place or garden between here and heaven proper when the soul waits for the last day and the resurrection of the body. Not till the soul gets its new or celestial body does it go to heaven. And all this because Christ on the Cross told the thief that this day he should be with him in paradise!The good old soul believes it all - and it will not hurt him! Part of the day have boiled sap out in the bushes by the spring, Julian building his pond the while, near by. Bees humming in the air. I sit here and read Greek history, with long pauses when my thoughts wander back to the old home and to [crossed out: they] those whom I shall see no more. 4th A cold rain from the north, nearly all day in doors. Finished the 3rd vol of Curtis's Greek History to-day. When one finishes this vol. his disgust with the Greek character is very strong. The downfall of Athens does one good, amid all his regrets. It comes as the proper fruit of Athenian folly and wickedness. Such fickleness,treachery, duplicity, corruption, was seldom displayed by any people. Lying and bribery were the two weapons the Athenians most used, I fail to see the bravery or heroism of the Greek character. All their great exploits of which we have heard so much utterly pale before some modern feats in arms. Leonidas and his men died game at Thermopylae, but what folly to put so small a band there in the first place. Marathon appears to have been but a small affair. At Salamis they were cornered and could not get away. The Greeks did not do more than well, while the Persians [crossed out: done] did worse then ill. At Plattaca the Greeks acted like fools. If the American democracy were capable of such folly as the AthenianDemos we would have gone to the dogs long ago. [crossed out: Th] Utterly helpless without a great leader and yet no sooner finding a man that could lead them than they got jealous of him and betray him to his enemies, or exile him, or condem him in his absence. The people seem utterly incapable of self government, and the man who could govern them, they soon betrayed and ruined. The grand want of the Greek character was stability and conscience. Even Pericles, stooped to bribery. The Athenians all ran to versatility of intellect. They had no tenacity of purpose, no depth and fixity of character. They were the victims of every glib tongue that happened to wag. They were capable of fine things and of noble [crossed out: spirits] spurts, but not capable of truethings. Their art, their poetry, and literature were great, but the meanness of the national character amid it all is unspeakable. That great poetry could be the outcome of such a people as that of Athens, discredits great poetry, and makes it very supicious. The words of the Greeks were far more splendid than their deeds. They ran too much to tongue. They were all talkers and orators. Thus every man had to speak in his own defence in court. His attorney prepared his clients speech, but the client had to speak it. The orators wrought all the mischief of the state. In short the career of Athens does not credit democracy. The great man of the demos ought to have been horsewhipped soundly at least once a week.6 Strong wind from the NW. sweeps the river like an immense broom; sweeps all the ice in a dense line along the east shore and holds it there and the waves grind it up. 8 To Coxsackie to-day; mild, with rain in the afternoon. 9 Clear, cold, windy. Quite a freeze last night. Ice all disappeared from the river. 11 Start for home on early train. Bright and mild. Reach home at noon. Hiram well ditto Smith and Emma. Begins to snow in afternoon and snows nearly all the time for three days. No sugar weather as I had hoped. Very chilly, sloppy, and dismal.13 Go to Edens to-day. Bleak and wintry. Eden much better, quite another man in looks and feelings. 14 Examine the bank at Stamford to-day and then to Sister Janes. Homer away. Don his old clothes and do the chores, - clean stables, fodder the cows and milk. 15 Back home today, disappointed in my trip; no boiling of sap in the woods, no trout and not all the banks. 16 Very bright and crisp; beautiful weather; boil sap again in the little pot out by the spring. The fox sparrow singing all about, indeed a regular fox-sparrow day. 17 Dazzlingly bright again, but cool and crisp - quite a freeze last night. Fox-sparrows again musical.19 Cool frosty nights and dazzling days; dry north wind. First hepatica to-day, Sunday. Robin and phoebe building their nests. Ground getting dry; wild onions greening the ground; grass but little started. Elm buds swelling, so that there is a suggestion of a swarm of bees amid the branches. Days very charming, but quite profitless to me; the sun has put out [crossed out: my intellectual] the minds fires. Shadowless April days! 20 To Millerton to-day and then to Bentons. Bright and hot. 21 At Bentons till noon. The perfection of April days, bright, placid, hot. Walk with Myron over and along the wooded ridge west of his house; find lotsof hepatica in bloom, many of them sweet scented. Home in the afternoon; the plow at work in many fields; an ox lolling with the heat. All the springy depressions in the fields getting green. 22. Calm and lovely as a dream no wind, no cloud, the sunlight pouring into the earth and the heat quickening everything. The bush sparrows trilling in the distance. First swallow to-day. Thermometer 82 degrees in the shade in N.Y. 87 degrees. 23 Blood root and dicentra to-day. Still hot but with pushing south wind. No thoughts and but little reading these days. Arbutus this afternoon.24. To Andes to-day. Bright and warm. A good ride over the mountains. The heel of a snow-bank here and there; streams very full, grass greening in the spring runs and moist slopes; the poplars with their green catkins all out. 25. Stayed at Margaretville, and go fishing in forenoon up Weaver Hollow, a secluded valley I had never before heard of; fine rapid trout stream, too full and not quite clear; the farm house, the hurried anxious farmer, his father low with paralytic stroke, the good talkative boy who goes with me along the stream etc. Take 30 trout. The beautiful falls, a pair of them; find the yellow violet and spring beauty just opened. Day very bright and cooler.At Stony Hollow, six Kingston girls get on the train with bundles and baskets of Arbutus. Such a lot of arbutus I never before saw brought out of the wood; they had enough to fill a clothes basket; it perfumed the whole car. They must have made a clean sweep. In fact they were hoggish. I asked one of them if they were going to deck a public hall with it. In the vicinity of all the large towns the wild flowers exterminated by this senseless greed of the girls and boys.May 1st Slow cold rain all day from the north. Foliage about the same as last year at this time. Infant leaves on currant bushes, apples trees, cherry trees, maples trees, willow trees, etc. In-doors all day working on bank reports; a fire of peach-tree wood in my fire place. - The contrary of natural religion is not revealed religion, for all truth is revealed truth, revealed from the inner [crossed out: ?] consciousness of man; but the contrary of it is artificial religion like the scheme of salvation propounded by the Churches.3rd Bright day but cool. The trio of maples over the fence just ready to shake out their tassels. Julian and I take a walk to the woods, over by the falls. Still find some fine arbutus on the northern slopes of the woods. Find violets and dandelions in the field. The green warbler, black and white creeping warbler and one or two others in the woods. - Think of the vital processes going on in the body of each of us! the known and the unknown or inexplicable processes! Check or derange those processes and we are sick; stop them, and we die. What we call the mind or soul is just as much a result of these processes as is our appetite or our animal heat.10. Sunday. Weather cool. Cherry blossoms out; the tops of the forest trees just lightly brushed with yellow-green. Bees working on the sugar maples. The past week cold and wet. Went to Pat Jarvis and Walden, and spent a day at Houghton farm 14 Cool, overcast; worked all day at cleaning study etc. 15. A soft bright day; a mist of foliage on the fruit and maple trees. Some maple leaves an inch long and broad, and others with buds not yet open; dandelions dotting the grass everywhere, warblers and other birds all here. The piping of the oriole very noticeable in front of my study. No signs of any mental activity.May 18 - I find it impossible to believe that I shall be anything more after I have left this world than before I came into it, or that the future can be anything more to me than the past has been. How can it be? If I was nothing before I got this body, how can I be anything after I have lost it? "Whatever I am, I am of my body." Whatever I owe to it, I shall lose after I am done with it. Ones moral or intellectual immorality is clear enough; not a motion of ones hand can be destroyed after it is made. But this kind of immortality amounts to nothing; one wants a real immortality. Hamlet and Lear are immortal too in this sense; but we crave an actual continuance of consciousness and identity. - Soft warm brooding may days; apple and [crossed out: other fruit] pear trees in full bloom; all the birds jubilant; yet no thought, no incident to fix the beautiful day in memory, and make it a permanent possession. 20. Many of the rarer warblers here this morning, feeding on some minute insect in the apple trees. The bay breasted, the chestnut sided, the speckled Canada, the black capped, and two or three other kinds I am not so sure of, all in one apple tree.24. Moist soft weather with, but little rain. The week of bloom just ending; foliage nearly all out; the cypripedium in bloom, yellow and pink. - Finished Newmans Apologia began a week ago; not much in it for me, dry and uninteresting as a book on politics, occupied entirely with artificial questions and issues; nothing vital or real in it; it is indeed all a discussion as to whether Santa Clause comes down the chimney or in at the window; on reading the Fathers, Newman was converted to the opinion that he comes down the chimney after all. It seems incredible that such a man could lay such stress upon such questions! But the style of the man and his tone and temper are admiarable; here his real Christian spirit shows itself 26.27.28.29.30.32 - Passed these days in a humdrum kind of way, lamenting the dry weather, reading a little, writing a little, working on the road, with an occasional walk to the woods, no event, no thought, to fix and perpetuate the memory of these flitting May days in my mind (Yes, I read Robin Hood to Julian and enjoyed it hugely.) June 1st Warm, soft, moist after the fine rain of yesterday. The clover just beginning to bloom; bird songs subsiding a little. Reading now and then in Stevenson "An Inland Voyage" very bright and very light. It does June 1st 85. not penetrate the mind at all. What is the matter with it? So much wit and fancy and good nature and good writing ought to make a deepr impression. It has no proper earnestness or seriousness. The author is constantly on the stretch to be bright and entertaining. It is this that occupies him and not any serious purpose to give us a vivid truthful picture of the river and country. He is occupied with himself and not with objects about him. Hence his fine things seem to have no root. His thoughts are parasitical. You never know how much he means, or how much to believe. Indeed the fault is a very fundamental one. See that thou avoided the like of it.June 3. A perfect summer day, lustrous, quiet, temperate. So fresh the foliage, so fresh the grass, so fresh all things; so pellucid the river, so blue the sky, so ruddy the clover, so busy the bees, so fragrant the locusts, so peaceful the country roads, so inviting and dense shadows - the sentiment of full fresh virgin nature everywhere; real Robin Hood days - days of romance and legend and a jolly life under the green wood tree. - Wanted: a [crossed out: an] scale to weigh my words with; one of my ever present faults is a want of deliberation in speaking and writing, I amcautious in everything except in what I say. In conversation I need to charge myself to think well before I speak; and in writing to deliberate long before making a positive statement. - Everything that floats upon the water, sooner or later comes to the shore. Ones consciousness is his shore, beyond it and ever yielding up things to it, lies the vast gulf of unconsciousness, where race, family, climate, nature, play such a part.June 6th To-day Myron Benton and I start for the woods; hope to meet Van Benschotens at Furlow lake; find on arriving at Arkville that they have left; telegraph them and meet them at Phoenicia at 4 P.M. Then up Snyder Hollow to Larkin's once more. Sleep in the woods at our old camp; find the beds and all as we left them last August, not a stick disturbed. 7. Start for Slide Mountain at 7 A.M. determined to assault it on the northern and steepest side; Andrew guides us to the forks or foot of the mountain, a five mile walk through an old wood road; a long and hard climb up the mountain, up the range upon which Slide sits. A dash of rain by and by. Twohours bring up on the top of the range, with Slide towering on our right, black and bristling with spruce; frequent signs of bears on [crossed out: in?] the side of the mountain. After a while we reach a dense growth of spruce nearly on level ground; how hushed and strange and secluded it is. Here we pause and eat our lunch; the pretty painted trillium all about. This quiet grove is the hush before the storm; from its edge rises the first battlements of the mountain. These we scale, and then scale others and still others; it is up and up, "hitchity hatchity; up we go" all rocks and moss and brush and logs; an hour or so of this and we are at the top, and all mountains bow beneath us. What a prospect! The leaves grew smaller and smaller as we ascended; the season later, and later. Indeed on the top we fairly overtook the fleeing spring. The claytonia and adders tongue were just in bloom, flowers of April; the yellow birches had just put out their tassels; a species of shad bush, or June berry, was just in bloom. Strawberries were ripening in the valley, and April flowers blooming on the summit. Near by we found an ice cave and plenty of ice and cold water. Neay by we found an ice cave, and plenty of ice and cold water, a new thrush too, Bicknells thrush. The strange song arrested my attention at once - a thrush song plain enough, but in a minor key - very fine, attenuated like fine wine, and singularly resonant like the veeery's; very common all about the summit. No other thrush there. The black-capped warbler too, and snow bird. Pass the night comfortably in the hut; at gray dawn the rain routs us. Rain soon over, sun out again at 9 A.M. Van B and his brother, after studying the map beneath us, under my direction, start for head of Rondout; a bold adventerous tramp. Myron and I pass the day and night there. Wind shifts and a cold wave is upon us; we calk up the hut with balsam boughs, but at 9:30 P.M.the cold routs Myron; he has a chill, his teeth chatter; he fights the cold the rest of the nigh, aided by our scanty supply of decayed wood. I sleep beneath the piled on boughs fairly well, tho' the wind is icy cold. At dawn Myron crawls into my nest and I replenish the fire and the store of wood. Breakfast at 6. finishes our supplies, and at 8 we start off the mountain in a snow storm; round pellets of snow as in Nov. fall fast. We go straight down the Slide; it drops down beneath us and is lost in the fog; presently the wind whirls up the fog, and what a prospect is before us! After a hard pull downand down we reach the creek, and then at noon reach Larkin's hospitable habitation. [crossed out: The] 10 To day we pitch the tent in the old spot, and pass three delightful days there; plenty of trout, and a cup of wild strawberries. Calculate that at least 10 lbs of trout are daily taken from the stream. 13 Break camp this morning and off for home. Stop in Olive to see Father North. Take him some trout. The old man pretty feeble and lame, but making a brave fight of it with his 84 years upon him. 18 Hiram came to-day after an interval of 6 or 7 years. All that is left of the old home. How much came with him! father and mother and all the past. We sit about and talk and are silent. 19 Robert Scoular, from Alloway on the Doon - to day. A most hearty Scotchman. How much came with him too! Burns and Carlyle, and the flavor of that bonny land. Never saw [crossed out: ??] such youthful enthusiasm in a man of 65; just the opposite of Carlyle in some ways; admires and enjoys everything and every body. Stays two days and a night. 20 Finished haying to-day; hay light, but all in without a drop of rain; getting very dry. 22nd Hiram leaves for home this morning. I go with him over to the depot.24. Dry, dry and hard; no moisture in the sky; but light showers and dashes since early in May. 27. Hot, hot, dry, dry, dry! "And the heavens that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron." - Concrete existence, the life that now is. Is the immortality of which we hear so much, a kind of abstract existence? Every word we speak, or motion we make, or thought we think, is indestructable, and therefore immortal? Thus is Hamlet as immortal as Shakespeare. I can conceive of no other kind of immortality. What I am, what I standfor, that is my identity, is immortal; having once been the idea of it is indestructible and must ever be. But is this existence? is this anything to me? No: life is concrete. Does desire, does appetite exist after it is satisfied? Yet it is not destroyed. The fact that it was appetite still exists, as an abstract idea, and that is all. The proof of immortality seems to amount only to this. - Organic nature as we see it has grown to be what it is, by ceaseless experiment; by putting out and trying in every direction, the fittest, or the luckiest alone surviving. Such a waste as there has been, from the human point of view, is appalling, race devouring race, tribe devouring tribe, to the end of time. There is nothing like intelligence in nature, as man [crossed out: ?] shows intelligence. Nature goes on all fours. Every possible chance is hers and she tries them all. See the competition going on among the plants; which does Nature favor? all and each. Nature, in her method and aim, is always typified by the sphere, which you cannot say begins here and ends there, but which begins everywhere and ends everywhere, or more properly has neither beginning nor ending; neither is it of any form, tho' it holds all form. The ways and method of Nature are well symbolized by the fact that the rain falls upon the rivers and ponds and seas, the same as upon the land. Evidently it does not rain to make the land alive, but the land is alive because it rains. It is not to make the grass grow that the showers come, but the grass grows because the showers do come. 30. Cool. overcast, all day. The thought of father and mother has been much with me this day. How vividly their forms and voices have been before me! Perhaps it was my reading in the Bible in the Psalms, that set my mind to thinking of them. July 1st Cool, clear, windy day. As dry a June as I ever saw, and a dry May. Jul 4. No rain yet. Very cool lately, almost cold at night. A bright dry day so far. Strawberries hang on yet, raspberries ripening very slowly and poorly. Julian happy with his fire crackers. Plenty of long sad reminescences of the past, but no live thoughts of to-day. P.M. Portentous clouds and loud cracking thunder, but only a slight shower in the face of such a drought. The days are without incident or complexion to me.Jul 7 Fine rain at last that goes down to the roots of the springs and wells, and of the big trees. Julian and I rode home in it from P. - all the way in a mud-puddle. A rain out of the S.W. for nearly two hours. All the afternoon the clouds were marshalling and massing there and about 4 P.M their skirmish line was sent out; then presently the whole [crossed out: ar] body was in motion. 8 "How do we know" said Julian as I was putting him in his bed last night, "that the crust of the earth is getting thicker and thicker down to the centre?" I explained to him by the analogy of a cooling body or molten [crossed out: mettle] metal. "Ain't it strange," he said, "how muchwe find out about the Earth, the moon, and the sun!" "Papa, are we sure there is a God?" "Pretty sure," I said, "though he can never be seen by [crossed out: th] our eyes," 12. Cool, clear summer weather. Chestnut trees hoary with bloom, rye fields ripe for the cradle, the grass ripe for the scythe. Am reading Prof Seeley's "Natural Religion"; a thoughtful suggestive book, no page of which the reader can skip. More meat in it than in all the books [crossed out: I hav] on religion I have ever read. As literature it lacks perspective: the author has not Arnolds art of definition and of setting his thought forth so that the mind sees all around it and sees it entire.- In Emerson, one rarely hears the voice of clear simple reason and common sense; but the voice of poetry, of fable, of courage, of wit, etc. E. does not clear and discipline the mind, but he feeds and braces it up. 14 A fine rain from the south began this morning before we were up, and is still at 11 A.M. raining briskly. One can keep a record of the weather, but how can he keep a record of his life? The days go by and leave no mark. Half of this summer month is gone, and I do not know where it has gone to; I have little or nothing to show for it. So many days of one's life are simply negatives, or neutrals.Jul 20. Start for Delaware the at 2 P.M. with my horse, very hot and dry, stay in Olive all night. 21. Reach Lexington to day at 4 P.M. Stay with the Johnsons till 4 P.M. next day. 22nd Reach Hiram's to-night at 8 P.M. all well; very warm. 23rd Make the acquaintance of Miss Boswick this morning In the afternoon go up on the Old Clump with her; find a black quill going up; give it her and name her Raven's Plume; a fit name; there is something so black, intense and shining about her, and her heart bounds so [crossed out: at the sight] on looking down from a height into the bosom of mountain forests. Pick a quart or more of wild strawberries on the clump. Miss B. wants to stay till the moon is up, so we do not descend into the valley till 8 pm. The hermit thrush in full song. 24 Rain. Seek shelter under the rocks while we are huckleberrying. 25 To Eden's to-night. Stay till the 30th working in hay each afternoon. 30 Drive over to Hiram's to-day. Afternoon work in hay; very hot; we go down to the spring to drink, and sit in the shade. 31 On Old Clump to day, and at night. Miss B. Abagail and Igo up and pass the night there. Very warm. Sleep but little; hear the Cuckoos all night; not an hour but they are calling. We all lie on the ground side by side wrapped in our blankets. Aug 2nd On Old Clump again to-day all day, a long walk through the woods into the open fields, a day of poetry and romance. Miss B. takes to it all like an Indian maiden 3rd A day of cloud and rain. The beautiful scene under the rocks: the fire, her trim, enthusiastic, spirited figure, the brisk walk, the rain drops coursing down flushed cheeks etc. 4 Julian comes to day; We go on "Old Clump" again.5 Down to the grave yard and a long pause beside mother's and father's graves. Then to the falls; spend the day thus. 6 Back to Edens to-day by noon. Stay there till 14th [crossed out: On th] 8th Go to Homer Lynchs to-day all of us, the day of Genl. Grants funeral. 9 Sunday in [crossed out: Eden] Spruce Swamp; pick lots of huckleberries - a most delightful time; wife very good to me. 14 To Hiram's to-day by train. On Pine Hill, exploring the rocks. Miss B. calls it her castle. 16 Sunday, a long time [crossed out: on] when the ground pine curls hispretty wreaths. In afternoon on Old Clump with the Johnsons. 18 Back to Edens; wife in bad humor from hearing Anne's lies and slander. 20 Start for Deposit to-day. A pleasant three days at Oquaga lake with the Knapps and their friends. 25 To Hirams again today. Stay till 31st; have many walks and pic-nics with the Johnsons and Miss B; an enjoyable time. 31st Start for home to day; Miss B. with me to take the train in Shandaken; the scene at Big Indian I need not record; it is burnt into my memory.Sept 2nd Reach home to-day; terrible domestic storm that drenches and shakes things. 4th See Miss B. to-day in P for the last; much cut up by the unfortunate affair, very sorry for her and for all concerned. A noble, high minded girl, with a dash of the wild, the adventurous in her veins. I have never looked into a stronger, more unflinching pair of womans eyes. Farewell! You should have more pleasure than you will find in this world. To such as you the fates are only kind at intervals.15 Days getting bright and warm - soft, tranquil September weather at last. Still unsettled in mind - domestic skies still overcast. - What appears more real than the sky? We think of it and speak of it as if it were as positive and real a thing as the earth. It is blue, it is tender, it is overarching it is clear etc. See how the color is laid in it at sunset Yet what an illusion. There is no sky; it is only vacancy; it is only the absence of something. It is a glimpse of the Infinite. When we try to grasp or measure or define God, we find he is another sky, sheltering, overarchingpalpable to the casual eye, but receding, vanishing to the closer search - the vast power or space in which the worlds float but himself ungraspable, unattainable, forever soaring beyond our ken. Not a being, not an entity, but that which lies back of all being, all entities, "How can anyone teach concerning Brahma [crossed out: Allah]" etc. 17 Mrs. B left this morning for New Haven; very unsettled weather with her yet - storm and rain by spells. What will be the up shot of it? Julian and I alone in the house.19 Clear, warm and delightful for the past few days - but time profits me little 21 Came to Ocean Grove to-day J and I. 22nd Mrs B. came to-night. 29. One week now at the Grove. Bright placid days. Julian all day digging in the sand and building forts and castles, which the waves at night demolish. He is hungry for the shore and sticks to one spot as if he would devour it. I read a little, walk a little, and indulge in much reverie. Not very brisk in either mind or body.Oct 1st Go down to Camden to see Walt. A long ride across the flat desert part of the state. For 20 miles or more after we turn inland and strike out directly for Camden nothing but a level sandy plain, once an ancient sea beach, covered with low scrub oak and pine. The pine woods usually had an under lining of short heathery growth of deep crimson or maroon color. Paths here and there of snow white sand. Find Walt stretched upon his back. "Come in, Sir", he says cheerily, hearing my voice in the doorway of his room, and taking me for a stranger.He put up his hand as I approached, and then recognized me, "Oh, John, it is you is it; how glad I am to see you," His eyes are running from the effects of some drops just applied to them, and he can hardly see. He looks the same as usual, but he moves with much more difficulty than when I last saw him, and his eyes very bad for a week now. He had resigned himself to being blind, he said, but now his eyes were improving; right eye pretty good, left much congested and nearly useless. I took his hand and he arose from the sofa and walked to his big chair by the window, and I sat opposite. Here we spent the most of the day engaged in talk. Walt talked as well as usual, and was just as cheery and buoyant as ever. Told me about O'Connor, who left him but yesterday; is much disturbed about him, fears he is breaking up. O'.C. it seems can hardly walk, "jellatin legs," a tendancy to pitch to the right all the time, talks as brilliantly as ever etc. I get 100 oysters of a street vendor, and we have an oyster dinner to-gether. Walt eats very heartily; too heartily I think and tell him so.How delightful to be with him again; it does me immense good; I feel like a new person. It satisfies a kind of soul and body thirst. I grow like corn in July for the next two or three days. Leave at 3 1/2. Walt drives me to the station with his new horse and buggy. The first time I ever saw him drive. He is very proud of his present. 2nd Leave Ocean Grove this morning at 8; spend the day in N.Y. and reach home at 7 P.M. 3 A lovely day, still and bright, like a dream. - On the beach the waves at times come wallowing ashore like a great flock of sheep; the wave breaks far out and thencomes that rushing line of tossing leaping wooly heads and shoulders; they are not steeds, but a wild mob of wooly headed sheep. Oct 9. Cool gray days; no wind, no sun - days to sit indoors by an open wood fire, and read and ruminate. Very cool fall so far; but little frost, yet no warmth. A peach wood fire in my fireplace for past 3 days. Good weather to go forth too, and walk or hunt. How still it is; how slowly the clouds move, how the birds call and shout and dart and sing. They seem of a sudden vastly multiplied, jays and crows very noisy, chestnuts droppingapples dropping in the orchard, leaves [crossed out: shapely?] slowly dropping from the trees. When a big apple falls, there is a sudden rustle amid the branches, when it lets go its hold, then a mellow thump upon the green sward, and the King or Pippin lies there in the grass, dependent upon the tree no longer, its arboreal life rounded and ended, now it mellows and mellows to make itself a tempting bait for man or beast, and so ends. In afternoon Julian and I go for chestnuts. Find I can throw a club or a stone nearly as well as ever; no lameness in arm or shoulder. Got a fine lot of nuts. The big fine nuts Julian called "Alexander the Greats."- How much there is in race! Suppose Mexico, and the South American states, had been settled by the English and the Germans, instead of by the Spaniards and Portuguese, would there not have been a vastly different outcome? Spain begot these countries in the height of her power and splendor, but the [crossed out: seal of] fatal germ of her decadence was upon them; the race was spent.Emerson says, "no man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might." There was at least one man who stated his griefs as strongly as they could be stated, and that was Carlyle. 10 Day of great beauty - the peace and splendor of October at last. All day indoors examining the Fallkill Bank. 11 Another day of great beauty. What is it that has melted and diffused itself through the air? Pearls or opals and rubies? What a tone, what a sentiment pervades space and glorifies all things12 Julian's first day in school. I went up with him. A great event to him - and to me. What long, long thoughts it set going! My first day at school was more than 40 years ago. I only remember going along the road with Olly Ann and asking her as we came to each house who lived there. I remember also I was afraid of any person I saw coming along the road. How well I remember a suit of clothes Mother made for me to wear to school in those early miocene days. It was made of striped bluish-purplish cotton cloth, and had little ears or epaulets on the shoulders that flapped when I ranJulian said he would not mind going to school, if he was not so dumb about his book. He knows so much about other things that he seems to think it a disgrace that he should know so little about his book. If he lives to look back to this day 40 years from now, how strange and far off and incredible it will seem to him! Oct 13. It is dangerous work to make a definition, or to prescribe bounds to the meaning of a word. Dr. Bushnell defined the supernatural as anything whatever it be, "that is either not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain or cause and effect in nature from without the chain."The Duke of Argyle points out that according to this view, a steam-engine is a supernatural work, because it is made by "acting on the chain of cause and effect in Nature from without the chain." 20 One of Julian's mates in school is named Ox Lynn; at least so he calls it. - The brightest, lightest writer of whom I have any knowledge - Voltaire. 22. A still, overcast, motionless day after the heavy rain of yesterday. The brilliant foliage on the maples, or covering the ground beneath them, almost takes the place of sunshine. They indeed shed a sort of mild radiance or glory, that tempers the heavy shadow of the day in their presence. - Mrs. B. advises me to give up writing and do something else for a living. She advises me in the same spirit that the wife of a cobbler, or carpenter might advise her husband to give up his trade and try some other! Nov 1st First hard frost last night; hurt grapes. - How prone we are to look upon the sun as an appurtenance of the earth. How it seems to attend the earth and to swing around it to light and warm- A baby or a young child has not, when danger threatens, the instinct of the young of animals or birds, namely, to remain perfectly motionless till the mother makes a move, and then to follow her. When the cow hides her calf, you may almost run over the calf and it will not move till its mother appears. The other day in the woods I came upon a brood of half grown partridges. As I stood looking [crossed out: a] intently upon a certain point, my eye gradually made out the form of a partridge squat upon the ground not 12 feet away. The old bird did not even wink, so motionless was she. A step forward on my part and she was off in a twinkling, and instantly,all about my feet, her young burst up. They were within reach of me, but not one stirred till the mother gave the signal. ------ it on all sides. How immense seems the earth, how small comparatively the sun! See it setting behind the hills. The sunset and the sunrise are such great facts to us! Xenophanes, according to Plutarch, thought the earth had many suns and many moons. An eclipse of the sun, he said Nov 2nd Heavy rain from the north; all the ground running over; four or five very heavy rains since August. - "I hold that city or state happy" says Plutarch p. 20, vol 11, "and most likely to remain democratic, in which those that are not personally injured are yet as forward to question and correct wrongdoers, as that person who is more immediately wronged." This is just where we fall short in America. Indeed, we do not even grumble when we are injured ourselves. 8 Another heavy rain; everything afloat again. I do not remember such frequent heavy rains during any fall since I have lived here. Thunder too, which means a warm fall.Last night Julian asked me, "Papa, which is the best business, to be a finder out about the earth and stars, or to be an artist?" I told him how much the artist Herkimer was said to have made during the few months he spent in this country ($25,000) which seemed to impress him much. Nov 13. One of those still, shining, opaline November mornings; warm as May; the air full of sounds - the distance all dim with white haze. Mrs. B. cleaning house. Her idea of a fine day is that it is a good wash or a good cleaning house day. Not one walk or ride has she had this fall. Reading now [ages?] Gibbon, Argyles Reign of Law, Ruskin, the Bible and writing on religion.- How many writers are merely local and temporary, a pleasure and a convenience for the hour. They are like the branch roads that run only local trains, while the great authors are like trunk lines which connect for distant points. Their books may not accommodate every man; they are for the through travelers; every age has use for them. Aristotle and Plato - what world-authors are these. I am reading Gibbon to-day - here too is a trunk line: "The splendid bridge that connects the old world with the new" said Carlyle to Emerson. - Arbitrary authority, in the main, ruled the ancient world. As an illustration, they deliberately built cities and filled them with people. Most of the ancient cities were built off hand in this way. Modern cities are all growths; they are, as it were built by nature. St Petersburg was perhaps the last of the arbitrarily built cities, no, Washington was the last. - Strange to say, we see letters before we do words we see particular facts before we put them together in a generalization. - I cannot bring myself to apply to God any terms that we apply to man such as will, purpose, design, love, intelligence. They are all inadequate; yet, they don't fit at all. God is not anthropomorphic. It is the presenting as such that makes infidels and atheists. That any conceivable man, or God-man should govern the world as it is governed is what we cannot believe; hencewe reject the notion of God altogether and admit only a vast impersonal, unconscionable power. - Nov 25. Two days and one night of heavy snow - the first of the season, - must have fallen near 20 inches, - from the north, apparently a local storm, unheralded by the weather prophets. Six or 8 inches of heavy wet snow on the ground this morning. Dec 8 A cold snap - down to 4 at the corner, down to 10 or 12 here. 9 Rain, rain. - The doubts, the misgivings, the despondencies, which our "converted" brethren have, are probably precisely analogousto the ups and downs which the literary man has - the same thing working on different emotions. [crossed out: Th] [crossed out: His] The dark, barren days, of the pious souls when hope all but expires, when God withdraws his countenance when the devil whispers all manner of suggestions in his ears - what are they but the literary man's periods of sterility when he thinks it is all over with him - when nothing he has done looks good, when it is all bad etc. But when the mood returns again, and his genius flows once more, how different it all looks, and is.Dec 13. Sunday The biggest snowstorms are usually gentlest in their beginning. Every appearance of a big storm now. Yesterday was bright and sharp; walked to P. Now at 11 a.m. a tiny flake or flakelet slowly falls to the earth here and there out of the dark still sky. We shall see if the prophecy is sound. Flock of robins here and cedar birds and blue-birds, Jays very noisy in the trees about. 14. [crossed out: 15] Snow storm turned out to be a heavy rain - another of the periodic down pours of which we have had so many this fall.- Prayer is practically a belief in miracles - a belief that the world is not governed by immutable law, but that God may be persuaded or stirred up to step out of his way to do what he would not otherwise do Yet prayer is a good thing for those who can have faith and pray in all sincerity. They shall surely be blessed. All sincere belief tends evermore to fulfill itself. If I believed in ghosts I should doubtless see ghosts. People always have. If I believed in answer to prayer, and could pray, my prayers would be answered - when I asked only for spiritual good. But if I prayedfor victory over my enemy on the eve of battle and believed that God listened to me and favored me, I should fight the better and stand a better chance of winning. Whatever begets enthusiasm and warms the soul up, as sincere prayer often does, is a blessing. We think the dew comes down from heaven, but it rises from the ground; so the answer to prayer rises within the soul itself. The answer is already within you, the heat of prayer calls it to the surface and makes you conscious of it.1885 Dec 18 - Read today in the Academy of the death of Mrs. Gilchrist. Many a sad thought has it caused me. Just now I can see or think of no one in England but her; she is the principal fact over there, and she is gone. The only woman I ever met to whose mind and character I instinctively bowed. She was a rare person, a person of rare intelligence. I met her first in 1876 in Phila and saw her last in London in her home in July 1882. Dec 20. Sharp, bright windy morning, a little snow on the ground, no ice on the river. 5 years ago today Mother died. Had Father lived, he would have been 83 years old to-day.23rd It is no doubt inevitable that Whitmans poems launched as they are [crossed out: amid] in the midst of modern literature, should be adjudged and tried by the standards of such literature, but how different, how vastly different, they are from it! How the Sacred Books of a race or a people rise above the familiar songs and poems of that people. Whitmans poems are much nearer akin to the Sacred Books than any other modern poems. It will take ages to assign them their true rank. - Bees out of the hive to-day.I suppose there are times when every [crossed out: to] cultivated person turns to literature for consolation, for strength, for spiritual refreshment the same as our fathers turned to the Bible. What poets does he read then? not the more literary poets, the third and fourth rate singers, but the real bards. I can read Wordsworth, Emerson, Whitman, but not Byron or Shakespeare. I can read Tennyson and Arnold, though not when in my most serious moods. I cannot say that the poets help me as certain others do. Swinburne and Rosetti I cannot read in any mood.Dec 29. A mild, dry, gray day, with rifts here and there in the low fleecy clouds showing the blue. When the sun shines through upon patches of woodland here and there the effect on the treetops is a peculiar warm ash color. Myron and his wife left this morning; Came on the eve of the 24th a pleasant visit from them. Yesterday walked to the woods and dug up a root of the showy ladies slipper, also, aplectrum and [sarracenia?] for Myron. Ground bare and frozen quite dry. River again like the face of the moon under the telescope. Robins and blue birds still here. In the still morning air, hear the sound of long weeping and wailing up at the parsonage, the striken people bemoaning the death of Charlie Capron, who died on Sunday night after an illness of 48 hours only of scarlet fever. A fine manly youth of 15 years. All over the [crossed out: heart] earth, now and in all ages past, the same weeping and bemoaning the dead goes on and has gone on forever. Oh, the hearts that bleed and have blead! Only the eyes of the dead are forever safe from tears; only the hearts that are still are beyond the reach of this agony.1886 30 Day of great brightness and beauty Ground dry and bare, temperature mild. Jany 1st Much rain yesterday. To-day bright and mild; bees out of the hive; like a mild March day. Bluebirds here. Health pretty good, the best of any winter for a long time. But few of my peculiar symptoms, except occasional whirling in my head, which I do not like, and an occasional jump or flutter of my heart. Sleep has been poor during the late fall, but is better now.2nd Bright and mild; flies dancing in the air; J and I go a hunting red squirrels. 5th Powerful rain last night, hell let loose, roads washed, and ground overflowing. Mild and clearing this morning; the thermometer at 50; all signs of an open winter; angle-worms crawling about as in spring; a little snowbird bathing in a clear puddle as in summer; clouds warm and indolent as July. 9 Mercury down to 9 with fierce wind and snow from the north. Many thoughts of father today, the second anniversary of his death.Jany 12. Mercury down to 7 or 8 below zero this morning; the ice on the river like glass and whooping all night [crossed out: with] in glee at the cold; its savage exultant whoops and snorts went up first from one side then another. A glorious skate yesterday, the best I ever had on the river. A high-hole calling this morning, - bluebirds yesterday and today. A day absolutely clear and absolutely still; thermometer only 3 or 4 above zero at noon. 13 Day like the above but a few degrees warmer.14 Three remarkable days; perfectly clear and perfectly still, with the mercury hovering about zero; the purest of winter products like brilliant frost diamonds. Apparently very uniform all over the country, little inequality of pressure or temperature, so that there is no motion of the air. The great aerial ocean has found its level and is perfectly calm - the serene content of winter. Yet out of the sunshine comes peal upon peal of soft mimic thunder; sometimes a regular crash aas if all the batteries were discharged at once [crossed out: one]; it is the thunder of the ice on the river. [crossed out: If that icy expanse was a thin sheet of this metal] As noon approaches and the power of the sun begins to be felt the air is filled with a continuous mellow roar. The whoops or peals are as mellow as if made by a huge bee shooting past. The sound is like thunder in that it is in such swift motion; you cannot locate it any more than you can the hum of summer overhead; it is everywhere andyet no where; there is a phantom character about it; the valley down there seems haunted with weird whooping voices. To the eye all is still and rigid and corpse like, but to the ear all is in swift motion. This ice cloud does not open and let the bolt leap forth, but walk upon the ice and you see its shining track through it, in every direction the ice is shot through with crystal lines where the force passed. Sometimes I fancy the sound is like the strokes of a gigantic skater, one who covers a mile at a stride and makes theicy floor ring beneath him. His long tapering stroke rings out in your front, and then before you can think is heard [crossed out: from] half a mile away. With what speed he goes, but that flash was not from his skate; it was the gleam of a huge frost crystal. Not merely by day, but all night long, the ice thunders. It is then contracting under the cold, naked skies, as by day it is expanding, and a variation of the temperature either up or down, sets it going. A fall of snow and all is still, the icy thunder is quenched.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1886
Text: 1886 Jan 15. The stillness, the brightness, the sharpness continue [crossed out: s]. Below zero this morning. Yet the sky and air look as warm as mid-summer. A warm haze fills all the distance and gives a softness and tenderness to the sky. - An oracle, says Pliny, [crossed out: had] predicted that upon a certain day Aeschylus would be killed by the fall of a house; so upon that day the poet would trust himself only under the canopy of heaven, when an eagle flying over let drop a tortoise...
Show more1886 Jan 15. The stillness, the brightness, the sharpness continue [crossed out: s]. Below zero this morning. Yet the sky and air look as warm as mid-summer. A warm haze fills all the distance and gives a softness and tenderness to the sky. - An oracle, says Pliny, [crossed out: had] predicted that upon a certain day Aeschylus would be killed by the fall of a house; so upon that day the poet would trust himself only under the canopy of heaven, when an eagle flying over let drop a tortoise upon his head and killed him.- Dr. Holmes as a writer, is like a stove that always draws well; the fire is very bright and lively and the combustion is complete, but then, the heat is not great, often no more than the heat of rushes or straw. If his profundity and seriousness were equal to his wit and brightness, he would take rank among the great ones. No smoke in our genial Doctor, no smouldering embers, but always the clearest and quickest of flame. - Mr Sanborn thinks John Brown caused thewar. Not so: that which caused Brown, caused the war. He only fanned for a moment the fire that was already deeply kindled. - Various reasons are given why the Greek architects fluted their columns; some say it was to preserve the crystalic effect of the marble. Dr. Curtis says it was to carry the eye upward and to identify the column with the building. But the most obvious reason is that it so enhances the expession of strength; it gives the column an athletic, even muscular look. A smooth polished column looks tame and dull; it might be oftallow for all the eye sees; one almost expects to see it crushed; but add these sharp long slender lines, and what life and activity [crossed out: is] are infused into it! - I look upon that man as lucky who feels a want which the Church can supply. It puts him in relation with the world, [crossed out: with com] gives him an interest with communities far outside of [crossed out: himself] his own neighborhood, that is wholesome and desirable. The name of his Church and his heart throbs with a home feeling wherever he is. It doubtless awakens a more personal and intimatea feeling in him than that of patriotism. The success of the church as an organization and of such societies as the Oddfellows is probably owing largely to this desire which we all have for a closer bond of union with our fellow man. We do not like to feel isolated and alone. A common race, a common country is not enough; there are those who belong peculiarly to us, [crossed out: they] who think and feel as we do; let us in some way unite ourselves to them; let us find our bretheren - put all our hearts together and see if we cannot warm one little spot in this cold universeWhat comfort my father had in his church, and in it organ The Signs of the Times. These were the voices of his brothers and sisters who spoke here, though they lived in Oregon or in Texas; their words warmed him. That they had had the same experience as he had, the same struggles and doubts and despairs, touched him in a way peculiarly close and precious. None of his degenerate sons belong to the church, and none of them are as worthy as he - none of them stand as well as men in the community as he did. I do not speak so much of myself. I know I am fathers superior in some ways, and his inferior in others. I have not his self-reliance, nor his innocence. He was as unsophisticated as a child. [crossed out: And] I cannot accept my [crossed out: lot] place and lot in the world as cheerfully as he did, and I doubt much if I could have fought the same battles as he did, under the same conditions, with the same success. I look back at the work he did - he and Mother - the farm they improved and paid for, the family they reared, with unspeakable longing. How idle and trivial seem my own days! Much of this feeling I know is the passion of the past.Jany 29. Cloudywith some fine rain for three days past. Robins here to-day, going north. - Religion as a special and peculiar or miraculous gift - some-thing entirely outside and independent of a man's natural goodness and practice of of virtue, - something which an upright and blameless man may live and die without and which a cut-throat during his last moment of life upon the scaffold may have - this view of religion has had its day. - Yet, as a rule, the most desperate sinners are the most easily converted. Men who have lived fairly correct and conscientious lives, are less likely to be suddenly smitten with terror and remorse. Just as it seems easier for a man to win the love of a woman who hates him, than the love of one who is indifferent to him. Feb 7. A severe cold wave has just passed over us; thermometer down to 8 or 10 below; ice on the river 13 inches thick. A flock of 25 robins yesterday. - What is great thought but the expression of a great man. Without great men there are no great thoughts. Small men may have bright and entertaining thoughts, but only a truly great man can give one the impression of greatness. Feb 13. Home from N.Y. last night after a 5 days visit. Nothing of note to report. Visited the Morgan collection of pictures; saw a picture by Jules Breton, "The Communicants," that pleased me much. Am convinced that Millet ran his theory into the ground at times. In the Wood Splitter, you cannot tell whether the back ground is woods or tied up bunches of corn stalks, or sugar cane. His figures are great because of their seriousness, and the force of nature they hold or expressAt the Water Color exhibition saw little that took me, tho' I am no judge of pictures. Stayed two nights with Gilder and went with him to the authors Club, a slim turn-out, a pretty slim set of authors at best, when all are there. They blackballed Walt Whitman not long since. Think what the hope of American letters is in the hands of such men! I sincerely pity them. They are mostly the mere mice of literature. Such men as Gilder and Stedman and DeKay recognize Whitmen, but probably the least one of the remainder believes himself a greater man.J.W. Alexander makes a sketch of me for the Century - a good picture I should say, but not a good likeness. A pouring rain on Thursday 4 1/2 inches of water in 24 hours. Rain continued on Friday and Saturday. - 14. Warm; Snow nearly all gone; bees out of the hive; ground overflowing with water again. Killed two native mice in my bee-hive where they had feasted on bees and honey all winter. Blue-birds call as in spring. Feels and looks like spring.Feb 18. Clear; ground bare, signs of spring. Pretty good sap weather. Purple finch in song this morning; song sparrow, in song yesterday; robins eating the frozen apples on the tree. Etta, our Clintondale girl, one of the best we ever had, left last night for home, and the dish-towel is again taken up by me. Mrs. B's ill temper, the cause as usual. No girl of spirit can stand it here more than three months. 28. To Millerton on the 24th to examine the bank. Heavy rains on Thursday [crossed out: Friday], the 25thFriday, Saturday and to-day, bright, hard, sharp and very windy. The roaring winds of March. Thermometer down to 7 or 8. Ground bare and hard as iron. Ice on river smooth and firm. - The last of the proof of new book to-day; probably the least valuable of my books. Mch 1st Days of polished iron, cold, windy, hard and sharp. Mercury at 8 this morning. 7. The blizzard has tapered off into calm, clear, remarkably bright days. Not a cloud in the sky yesterday or today. Sharp and dry; ice on the river like a plain of burnishedsteel; roads getting dry. No thoughts for a month past, still reading Gibbon, began last July. Am determined to finish him by April. Carlyle read him in 12 days; I cannot do it in 12 months at least. - Whole seasons pass and I make not one new observation, gather not one new fact; other seasons again I make many of them. It all depends upon your temper or frame of mind. If you are not in the mood for the new facts you will not find them. The new facts are always there beforeyou; the question is, will you, or can you, see them. Some conditions of the mind and heart attract facts as a magnet attracts iron filings; other conditions repel them, or pass them by indifferently. When I am intent upon any particular phase of natural history, I meet with new facts and confirmations everywhere. If a man thinks about arrow heads in his walk, he will be surprised at the number he will find. Train your eye to pick out four-leafed clovers, and you find them everywhere.Mch 10. Sharp, bright day. Ice moved up last night on the river. To-day it is in motion (very slow and entire) below the ice house. Days a perfect plank to me so far as original thought or observation goes. 17 Much bright mild weather, sap weather so far. Julian and I have boiled three day out under the trees by the spring. - The religion of the great mass of people is only a matter of prudence, a form of their present world--liness. They look out ahead, they invest in the securities of the Church because they believe the returns will be ample by and by. How rash, how imprudent to run the risk of going to Hell when a little caution and self-denial now will make all secure! Take the great body of the Catholics, for instance, what are they looking out for but the safety of their bacon, of high spiritual things, what do they know or care? Our methodist bretheren, for the most part, invest in religion from motives of prudence; they do it after duly considering it, as they would a business venture.That which a man can choose or reject is not religion; that is an opinion, or a theory; religion is as vital to him as the color of his blood; he has it, or he has it not, and there is no choice about it. Who would not say that Julian, the Apostate, had more religion than any known Roman of his time - more than of the real essence of Christianity. - Lowell is not a healing or helpful writer; he does not touch the spirit, the soul; but reaches only the wit, the fancy, the intelligence. He has no religion, none of thatsubtle piety and goodness and lovingness that mark the great teachers and founders. Writers and poets might well be divided into two classes; those who rest with the mind, and those who penetrate to the spirit. Poets like Pope and his school, men of quick and keen intelligence, and prose writers like Lowell, belong to the former class; while Wordsworth, Emerson, Carlyle, and men of this stamp belong to the latter, and address the soul.The Westminster Review praises my style etc; says language in my hands is like a violin in the hands of a master. But really I have no dexterity as a writer; I can only walk along a straight, smooth path. Of the many nice and difficult things I see done in prose by dozens of writers I am utterly incapable. What I see and feel I can express, but it must be all plain sailing. I do not know how to utter platitudes, if I wanted to, and the other things come only at rare intervals.Mch 19. Finished Gibbons Decline and a Fall this morning, began last summer; my principal reading during all these months. Not easy reading to me. Gibbon's sentences are like spheres - there is only a smooth curved surface for a mind to grasp. Carlyle groaned over Frederick, but how much more reason had Gibbon to groan over his task; and yet he says it "amused and exercised twenty years." His work is like a piece of masonry of dressed stone. Every sentence fits its place; there is not a jaggedline or an unfinished spot anywhere. And it is plain to see that he tore his material from the rocks and mountains as it were, and set it in this smooth, compact order. A splendid bridge as Carlyle said to Emerson, leading from the old world to the new. - To read Gibbon is to be present at the creation of the world - the modern world. We see the chaos out of which it came; we see the breaking up of old worlds, old conditions and races and the slow formation of the new. The most astonishing and impressive thing in the history of the worldare those swarms upon swarms of barbarians, from the North from the East, from the South perpetually breaking in and over-running the old Empire. One comes to think of the Empire as a circle more or less filled with light; all around it on all sides is darkness, and out of this darkness come [crossed out: rid] fiercely riding these savage hords; as soon as they cross the line made visible to us, out of this fierce volcanic lava of humanity the modern races and worlds have arisen. The main push and impulse comes always from the plains of Central Asia; this seems to be the well-head of mankind. What we see in Roman history is doubtless but a continuation of a process which had been going on for many ages; it is agreed by all that our Aryan ancestors were an eruption from the same fertile source. Mch 27. Much bright cold weather so far in March, much good sap-weather. Roads getting quite dry. Frost about out of the ground, a little rain and snow last night. Bright to-day.Mch 28. Bright day, Sunday. Julian and I walk to the woods and burn an old pine stub, much fun for J and for me too. Hear the first little frog not in the swamp, but in the woods. Newts getting ready to spawn in the water. Van B reports the wood-frog lively in a little pool in the woods beside the road. 29. Go home to-day; reach there at noon. Go up with Hiram from Depot. No sugar weather - rainy. 30. Rainy, but tap part of the bush in afternoon. 31. Still wet; finish the bush to-day.April 1st Heavy rain last night with thunder - the second thunder storm of March, both followed by warm weather instead of cold, as the sign indicates. Bright and windy to-day. All day I boil sap in the old bush; reduce 160 pails to 4 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Enjoy it much. 2nd Still bright and cool; wander about the old place in fore noon with long, long thoughts. Oh, the pathos of the old scenes where my youth was passed where father and mother lived and died, and where my heart has always been. When I come home a sort of perpetural fever I havesubsides, the old place soothes and satisfies me, and yet there is pain too amid it all, the pain one has in walking amid graves. During the rain I sat in the house and read Caesar's Commentaries and the Bible. 3rd My 49th birth-day. Came back from home last night; little frogs in full chorus near depot; Snow on the ground this morning, but bright and mild this P.M. Now for the annual inventory of health symptons: Health probably better than one year ago, except sleeplessness; been nearly free of it for pasttwo months, till I went out home, when it came back. Strength good in both arms and both legs; left-leg about as good as the other, harmonize very well. Less pricking and smarting in ends of fingers and toes than one year ago. Heart still flutters at times, probably indigestion. But little head ache since last fall. Sense of touch better than last spring. 6. Another destructive and damnable rain from the North and East, one of the series of down pours that began last August and have continued every two or three weeks ever since. Everythingafloat. Folly and excess on the part of the weather like that of a drunken man. 9. A perfect spring day at last, one expanse of blue and one flood of light. Bees carrying their first pollen; no wild flowers yet. 11 Sunday - a fine day. Julian and I walk to the woods. See a partridge drum; gather the first arbutus; no hepaticas yet in those woods. 14 A delicious day; warm as May. This to me is the most bewitching part of the whole year. Ones relish is so keen and the bites are so few and so tender. How the fields of winter rye stand out! They call up a vision of England. A perfect day in April, far excels a perfect day in June. How busy the bees are to-day carrying pollen - every bee in a hurry. The river crinkles and stirs slowly and lazily, as if it too enjoyed the warmth and the blue sky. How clearly and singly the bush-sparrows song is projected upon the fresh warm [crossed out: side] quiet. Phoebe and song sparrow building yesterday and to-day. Such days have all the peace and geniality of summer without any of its satiety or enervating heat.April 15. Not much cloud this morning, but much vapor in the air. A cool south wind with streaks of pungent vegetable odor. When I smell too determinedly for it I miss it, but when I let my nose have its own way and take in the air slowly, I get it. An odor of a myriad swelling buds. 16 The fair days continue, tranquil, peaceful, brooding April days, the most delicious of the year. Soft vapory moon-light nights too. In the morning the long drawn call of the highhole comes up, then the tender rapid thrill of the little bush or russet sparrow, then the piercing sword like note of the meadow starling.I am content to sit about all day and dream and muse, and let my eye roam over the landscape, lingering long on the emerald spots. - Always on the extreme verge of time; this moment that now passes is the latest moment of all eternities. New time always; the time we have lived and mellowed and that has been hallowed by [crossed out: ?] the presence of friends or parents, or great events, is forever gone; this we keep only in memory. The day is always new, hence the crudeness and rawness and prosiness of the present. We can keep the old, all except the old times. The oldhouse, the old fields, and in a measure the old friends, but the atmosphere that bathed it all, the past days, this we cannot keep. Time does not become sacred to us until we have lived it, until it has passed over us and taken with it a part of ourselves. While it is here we value it not; but the instant it is gone and become yesterday or last week, how tender and poetic it looks to us. Oh, the power of the past! How the days accumulate behind us, and turn their beautiful sad faces toward us. Here we stand upon the verge, the shore of time, with all thatgrowing past back of us, like a fair land idealized by distance into which we may not enter, or to which we may not return. The future is unknwon to us, [crossed out: does] in fact, does not exist, but the past is a part of ourselves. The days are our children which we have for a little time and then they are taken from us; one by one they step across the line into that land from which there is no returning, and not till they are gone do we see how beautiful and pathetic they were and how deeply we loved them. If our friends should come back fromthe grave they [crossed out: would] could not be what they were to us, unless our dead selves came back also. How precious and pathetic the thought of father and mother yet the enchantment of the past is over them also. [crossed out: The pathos of the memory of them blends with and is enhanced by the deep pathos of the past.] They are in that sacred land, their faces shine with its hallowed light, their voices come to us with its moving tones. Probably the last time you looked upon your aged father and mother in life, you said now let me forestall the grief which I shall feel when he is gone, let me feel it now; I know it must soon come; let me look upon him as with the eyes of the future when he shall be taken away. But you cannot, you cannot anticipate the past; you cannot see the present as you will see the past; beyond the impassable gulf all things assume new and strange features. Probably there is no clew to the past like music, or like a closely allied sensation, that produced by odor. Music and perfume bring back the past to us vividly; a whiff of a certain fragrance, the smell of a room of a flower, the breath of a wandering breeze, or a longforgotten air, or melody, a snatch of a song etc, and [crossed out: for a] like a flash the past is resurrected, for a brief moment we live the life of other days, and live it as it is to the imagination, not as it was to the dull sense. It comes over us like a wave and is gone. We can never see the color of the present; we do not know what it is like until it is gone, and this because it is not complete until it is gone; then it detaches itself, like a fruit. A glimpse of a day, a year, or several years ago, set in the midst of this, [crossed out: thereby] and then you see what it was like. I met a friend I had not seen for a quarter of a century; the sight of his face did not restore him to me, but his voice, that brought it all back; that made the dead alive The great power of music is this power it has to restore the past, and restore it idealized and complete. April 21. The enchanting days continue without a break. Ones senses are not large enough to take them all in. Maple buds just bursting, apple trees full of infantile leaves. How the poplars and willows stand out. A moist warm, brooding haze over all the Earth. All day my little rustic or bush sparrow sings and trills divinely. The most pronounced bird music in April is from the sparrows. The yellow birds are lust getting on their yellow coats. I saw some yesterday that had a smutty, unwashed look from the new yellow shining through the old drab webs of the feathers. Thermometer ranges from 75 to 78. 24. The warm tranquil weather confined till noon to-day when the change came from the north, wind and cloud and rain and thunder. Much cooler. Plumb and cherry trees in bloom. All the groves and woods lightly touched with new foliage. Looks like May. Violets and dandelions in bloom. Sparrows nest with two eggs. Maples hanging out their delicate fringe-like bloom. This period of sunshine and calm, this peace and reposeand repose of the weather, just ended, corresponds to the October calm, which we call the Indian summer. The vernal equipoise. 27. Cool, overcast. Go to Northampton to-day. Spend an hour in Hudson walking the streets. Look across to the Catskills and think of father and the many times he crossed the mountain in spring and fall. Long, long thoughts. When father was a boy of 12 or 13 he came to Hudson with his father in a lumber wagon all the way thence into Columbia Co. to visit friends; must be 70 years ago. Reach Northampton at 2 P.M. beautiful country; the heart of New England, a ripe mellow country. The meadows a great feature. So many colleges all about seem to give an air of culture which our state lacks. Great enthusiasm among the college girls. I lead great packs of them (40 or 50) to the fields and woods and help them ideftify the birds by their calls and songs. Two or three times a day we go forth once to the top of Mt.Tom. On Wednesday the President drives me to Amherst, a beautiful place, a sort of high island in a great rolling plain.30 Home to day via Hartford and Fishkill, a fine day; good view of the country. May 3rd Lovely day. Apple-trees in bloom. Cherry trees have dropped their bloom. Maple tree cast quite a shadow. Ash and chestnut brushed with tender green. Season very early. 4 No May birds till this morning when wren and warbling vireo appeared. Air full of white vapor, warm and bright. Expect to start on my trip South and West to-night.May 4 9 1/2 A.M. - How it comes over me at times, that ones father and mother saw just such a day, saw spring come in the same way, the same feeling in the air, the same hopes and thoughts in their hearts. They saw the apple bloom come, heard the hum of bees, the voice of birds, and the world seemed young and fresh to them. How busy they were, he with his [crossed out: crops] "springs work" she with house hold affairs. Now alas, it is all over with them as soon it will be all over with us, and others will take our places. June 22nd The summer solstice finds me back from my seven weeks wanderings, apparently a sadder but not a wiser man. One cannot long run away from his sadness, nor easily overtake wisdom. All my sad moods and thoughts I find here on my return; a pale sisterhood of regrets and longings and remembrances; here they are again to bear me company. They could not follow me through the din and dust and excitement of my journeyings; only occasionally did I get a glimpse of them; they love solitude, and here they are. Well, welcome drooping and melancholy friends. I could not well do without you after all; I am glad to be back with you again, and to taste your bitter-sweet draught. Thoughts of father and mother, how could I part with you, and how far off you seemed to me in busy Chicago, or [crossed out: in] riding about Kentucky. Now you shall be near me again, the one on my right hand and the other on my left. And the domestic imps and furies, you too can now have your day; you have had but little chance at me for many weeks; now lay on. - Find the country very greenand fresh; a cool wet June in this section On Wednesday May 5th I saw Walt Whitman; spent two or three hours at his home in C. He was not very well and I was myself dull. He looked as fine as usual, sitting there by the window. On Thursday I went to Washington whither Mrs. B and Julian had gone the day before. Was in W. from May 6th till May 16th when I set out for KY. Arrived at Frankfurt, May 18, and drove about the Blue Grass region with Mr. Proctor till Friday 28th when I went to the Mammoth Cave; spent the Sunday at the Cave. Monday left for St. Louis; spent partof June 1st in St. Louis; then up the river by steamer to Quincy; then to Payson to meet the Allabens, friends of 30 years ago. Spend 2nd, 3rd and 4th of June with them; then to Chicago where we stay till June 15th stopping with Dr Burroughs - one of the best men I have yet known. From Chicago to Cleveland where we spend 3 days with the Pecks; then to Niagara on the 18th, then to Utica, where we pass Sunday, then home on the 21st. The fruits of the trip not yet obvious; whether I absorbed anything or not, remains to be determined. July 1st Still bright, cool, translucent days, remarkable. Currants all shipped yesterday, very listless and inactive; too much so at times; something wrong physically. Probably the re-action after the strain of travel. 3rd Soft, cool, hazy; a slight breeze from the river gently lifting the leaves. The smell of the blooming timothy upon the air; the rye fields nearly ready for the cradle 7th The first terrible heat of July: 96 degrees in the coolest shade sparrows and robins in full song. Chestnut trees hoary with bloom, strawberries yet hold out. No thoughts, no observations - dull - dull.July 12. Cool and dry. How the sunbeams dance upon the water this morning. A blue bird (male) with a note suggestive of a thrush - the olive-backed thrush; never hear it but I think of a thrush. No doubt but the progenitor of the blue-bird was a thrush. The speckled breast of the young, indicates this according to Darwins law. - Am reading Drummonds "Natural Law in the Spiritual World", the most [crossed out: amazing] transparent piece of sophistry I ever dipped into. An attempt to show that Calvinism, Scotch Presbyterianism, is scientifically true, or capable of scientific verification. By "Spiritual world" - he means the world of Scotch Presbyterianism. -"Christopher North" said finely that is is not necessary that we should understand fine poetry in order to feel and enjoy it, any more than fine music." 17 The middle of Summer. A fine rain at last from the south west, mainly at night. Strawberries yet to-day; raspberries nearly finished. Laddie kills a wood-chuck to-day upon the door stone, while we are at dinner. The varmints getting very bold; he killed one the other day near my study. Meditating an article on Drummonds Natural Law in the Spiritual World" - a book that will not hold water. 22 Cool, delicious summer weather, never saw a pieasanter July; only three or four very hot days so far. Spent most of day in the woods near P. a most delicious day long to be remembered. Walked up at 5 P.M. to Hyde Park along that beautiful and stately road. 27 Damp and muggy. Walked across country to Salt Point most of the way in a slow rain - 10 miles. A pleasant visit. Return next day. Aug 3rd Light rains the past week and much heat. But to-day is quite autumnalovercast and windy; real autumn clouds; thermometer about 64 degrees at noon. 13. August days of great tranquility; pretty hot: 86 degrees in shade and dry. The little russet or rustic bush sparrow still in full song. Soon squally domestic skies. 15 A clear, hard, brilliant, dry day, rather cool; ground getting very dry. "Papa" says Julian, "What is born with you won't grow again if it is cut off, will it?" Had a scare over the dear boy to day from the results of a bee sting on back of his neck. But he is all right again.- I notice that as one grows older he is less and less disposed to go cross lots. He finds that it is but little farther around the beaten way and that he can make the distance about as quick and a good deal easier. In taking the short cut one has fences to climb and ditches to leap, and he [crossed out: wants] needs the blood of youth. Hence, if we begin as radicals and revolutionists we generally end as conservatives and old fogies. - Discovered in Roxbury the other day that the solitary bee carries pollen on the under side of its body. The abdomen is covered with short hairs which hold the pollen. One of the bees stung me after provocation, but did not leave its stinger. Aug 22 Home to day, called by a telegram, expecting to find Curtis dead. Found him better, and not seriously ill. Up to Hirams in afternoon. 23. Up through the woods and down through the fields where old Sylvester Preston used to live when father first came upon the farm. Drank at his spring and tasted his sour hard apples. Then to Curtises. Find him dressed and walking about the house. Give him $10. He has a hard struggle and his boys are no help to him. He was the best worker while at home that father had, but he has done poorly for himself; mainly his wifes fault. 25 A day among the graves. In the forenoon go down to the graves of father and mother, and then stroll through the gounds, reading the names of the old residents once so familiar to me. Walk into the old church and stand in the pulpit and look over the empty seats where father and mother sat so often and where I have sat on many sad occasions. Oh, the pathos and the ugliness of the place to me! Why do the old scenes repel us as well as attract us? There is something even about the old home, and about my brothers and sisters, and the old neighbors, that makes an unpleasant impression. What is it? In the afternoon I walked through the Presbyterian burying ground and was astonished at the familiar names on every side staring at me from the cold marble. I seemed to have known in my youth half the people buried there. Here lie five of John Lee's family, all died in a few weeks in the fall of 1850. I remember the circumstances well. We were digging potatoes those days on the side hill above Chases. They all died of bloody dysentery. Here is the grave of Uncle Krum, aged 85, a hard drinker all his old age at least much exposed to wet and cold, and yet he lived thus long. A gruff swaggering kind of man, like a character on the stage. Sadly and long I mused amid the tombs. I seem to have seen all the old people, many of them nearly forgotton, in the flesh once more. I could recall their very looks and voices. If any of them had called out to me, I should have recognized the voice26 To Edens last night, find him and all of them pretty well. To Homer Lynchs in afternoon. In the evening tell them about my Kentucky trip. Jane advises me to give up writing - not to puzzle my head over such things; it is bad for the head! Poor Jane, I fear she has never read a dozen printed words of mine in her life, or shall I say, lucky Jane? But how little she knows of what is going on in this world! 27 Back home to-day. Weather very dry and hot. 28 Thermometer 90 degrees. 30 Slight rain. Last year every rain from August to Jany was very heavy. This yearbeginning in June, they are invariably light and slow. Sept 1st Cool and clear, very charming day. Finished the paper on Science and Theology. 4 To Olive today and a few hours with father North. The old man still hardy with a good color in his face. Go out to the barn and hunt hens eggs for him on the hay mow, lose my spectacles in the hay. - How characteristic these first September mornings, if one could only describe them. How still and meticulous, but how unlike the stillness of spring or summer. The air is resonant or hollow as the farmer says, and every sound distant or near is noticeable. The cawing of crows makes the larger strokes, with an occasional distant low of a cow. Then the call of the jay is a finer stroke; the plaintive call of the young yellow birds Still finer, while a steady unobtrusive under-tone of sound is furnished by the various crickets. Bird songs have ceased; the snicker of a red squirrel is now and then heard, and the piping of a chickadee, or the call of the migrating bobolinks high in the air. One would know it was the first week in Sept. if he were to wake up six months sleep, by the sounds alone. 9. Hot and dry. Oh, so dry! Thermometer 84 degrees 11 All day in the woods beneath the evergreens. An idyllic time. Clear and dry and hot.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1886-1887
Text: 1886 From Sept 12th 1886 to Jany 1st 1887 [Much religious speculation with early remarks of Julian on Santa Claus] Sept 12th - "Come and do business for eternity" says a Camp-meeting poster, and it struck the right note. Religion with the masses is a kind of business transaction in which they drive sharp bargains with God, and seek to cheat the devil out of his due. It is not so much love of God that moves them as fear for the safety of their own bacon. They invest in heavenly...
Show more1886 From Sept 12th 1886 to Jany 1st 1887 [Much religious speculation with early remarks of Julian on Santa Claus] Sept 12th - "Come and do business for eternity" says a Camp-meeting poster, and it struck the right note. Religion with the masses is a kind of business transaction in which they drive sharp bargains with God, and seek to cheat the devil out of his due. It is not so much love of God that moves them as fear for the safety of their own bacon. They invest in heavenly securities because they expect dividends by and by. It is a matter of worldly prudence and nothing more. 25. Frequent light rains, growing a little heavier lately. But the ground still very dry. Many springs and wells failing. Have written three articles since 1st of July, [crossed out: ?] on myself, on Science and Theology, and on my Kentucky trip, besides working a good deal over two other articles. 28 Rains growing heavier. A pretty heavy fall last night. One more trial and these will be a down pour indeed. A visit from Joel Benton yesterday and last night. 29. Another downpour last night; heavier and heavier. Oct 2nd Bright end cool; a light frost last night. Spent nearly the whole day in the woods. 7 One of the loveliest of October days. How jubilant the birds in the morning;Every day now is a holiday with them. How the robins call and scream and rush about; the thin sweet whistle of the white-throated sparrow here and there like children that can't keep in. - Dreamed of father and mother again last night.Oct 10. Loveliest of October days. - all gold by day and all silver by night. Peace, peace; how the [crossed out: ?] golden air broods and sleeps! Aaron Johns came Friday eve and stayed till this morning. All day yesterday we [crossed out: sat] sauntered about, or sat in the luminous shade of the maples. The shade of the trees and of the woods now is lighted up by the sun upon the brilliant foliage; the shadows glow. Aaron left me sad as usual. His coming brings other days, brings our camp life beside the delicious trout brooks, and all that goes with a free life in the woods. It brings twenty years of the past. My comrade, my soldier! I have a kind of attachment for him that I have for no other man. - Julian and I go walking to the woods. How ripe the foliage is getting. The warm weather hastens its ripening, just as it does that of fruit, apples, or pears, or peaches. [crossed out: ?] What a glow in the old cedar lane, the sumacs all aflame, the witch hazel in bloom and its cool perfume upon the air. Looking down this lane into a field green and tender with rye, how the eye lingers upon it, loth to turn away. Some leaves of the sumac are not merely brilliant, they have such a rich mellow tone; we can hardly leave them to wither. 11 The fifth of the lovely days. Leaves gently falling; the grass springing as in May. A hunt for wild bees in afternoon - found a swarm in a hemlock tree near the creek. 12 Another day of enchantment, a bugle-horn across the river in Roger's woods brings the golden age again. It seems peculiarly in keeping with the peace and haze and splendor of the day. 16 At Lake Mohonk for past three days, invited to be present at the Indian Conference, an enjoyable time. Met President Gates of Rutgers College; like him much, a genuine fellow; has 1886 a quality which only those born and bred in the country ever have. Pres. Oilman, also of Johns Hopkins; like him, but a man of less force than Gates. Met Elaine Goodale; a very sweet and attractive face, serious, thoughtful, self-conscious, genuine. Expect great things from that girl. Oct 23 Bright, sharp, dry days, all color and light. Spend the day in the woods. Mrs. B. in P since the 13th. Julian comes up on the boat to visit me and stays all night. - The greatest evils, the most gigantic wickednesses of the world Christianity has not yet removed, hardly abated at all. War: Christian nations still go to war. If two men fight out their differences and one kills the other, Christianity is greatly shocked, but not so with nations. Why is this? (Worth thinking about) Is it because masses of men are more subject to destiny or fate than individuals? The other great evil which Christianity has not cured is intemperance. Another is worldliness. Undoubtedly the modern nations are vastly more engrossed in temporary or worldly affairs than were the ancients. The ancients lived to ask, to war, to play, to religion much more than we of today. - Principal Tulloch praises Coleridge's attempts to gve a philosophical or metaphysical basis to Christianity - the atonement, original sin, the plan of salvation. I would as soon try to find a metaphysical basis for the man in the moon. Is there not something in the nature of things or in the laws of the mind that points to the fact that the Gladstone [crossed out: ?] government should be defeated in 1886? Which is the oldest, the mind and soul of man, or the birth of Christ and the plan of salvation? Christianity, like all historical events has its reasons, its cause, its natural philosophy, but the human mind was not shaped with reference to it, but vice versa. The Hudson river does not flow here to afford nature communication between New York and Albany, or to give all us dwellers on its banks a fair prospect. We are here because that is there. 1886 Nov 1st A bright delicious day after a whole week of cloud and rain So mild that the last katy-did languidly [crossed out: rasps] scrapes her much-worn fiddle. The wooded hills are russet and bronze, with emerald rye fields at their base. 5 Bright mild days continue. Rarely see finer November weather. - Accepting the orthodox view of things, is simply a question whether we shall take man and his history out of nature, out of the ordinary course of events, and introduce an exceptional, incalculable element. We cannot do this upon grounds of experiencebecause if experience proves anything, it proves that man and his life are not exceptions; he is subject to all the laws of nature just as the other animals are; they make no exception in his behalf; he is completely under the dominion of physical or universal conditions in life and in death. The Christian doctrines as held by the Church break completely and absolutely with the whole system of natural human knowledge. Christianity hinges upon the fall of man, and original sin, and what can be more fanciful or unreal than this notion? What foundation have they? None. Unless a man knows Christ in somy mystical unique way, he is damned to all eternity. We all know Christ through our reason, our consciences, our religious impulses, our purely human faculties and attributes, just as we know Buddah, or Socrates, but that is not enough. He must be known in a way that has no parallel or illustration in the rest of our knowledge; in short, in a way that completely breaks with all of our knowledge. His life and death are supposed to have some mysterious efficacy in saving the race of man from impending damnation; not an efficacy that can be grasped and explained, and made to harmonize with the rest of our knowledge, as we can grasp and explain the efficacy of the life of any good and great man in elevating the race, but in some way not communicable or capable of being stated in terms of natural human speech. Sin, as a thing apart from our conduct, or life, or as other than the result of violated law, is incapable of apprehension; it is a pure fiction. So is regeneration incomprehensible, except as the result of ceasing to do evil, and learning to do good. Good is what agrees with our moral and physical constitution and bad is the opposite. In fact the doctrinal part of Christianity as usually held, no more joins on to and becomes a part of our natural knowledge, than astrology harmonizes with astronomy. The two cannot be made to fuse or mix at all. It all had its growth in pre-scientific ages; it is an inheritance of the past as much as a belief in witchcraft and the evil eye. It did not break with human knowledge then; it was in keeping with the element of the marvellous and the exceptional of which human knowledge was then so largely made up. There was no science then, no conception of law and order in the universe, but the course of events, both human and natural, were subject to perpetual change and interruption by the interference of outside powers or beings. Natural law was not, but in its stead supernatural beings. The whole conception of Christianity was the work of this state of mind. But this state of mind is gone and we cannot bring it back if we wanted to. It still lingers in the following of the Catholic Church, and here and there among the women in the other churches; but to the typical man of today it is no longer possible. It is no longer possible for him to believe in miracles, or in any doctrines which suspend or supersede the grounds of human knowledge, or the ordinary workings of the human faculties. The process by which anything can become known to man is pretty well established; that there is or may be a new or peculiar process outside of reason and observation, is what the man of today can no longer believe. Undoubtedly Religion knows things in a more intimate and personal way that science does, but science can understand how this is so. The person in whose mind has been awakened a deep love of Christ comes to know Christ in a way that some outside observer does not; that is to say, his spirit takes hold of the Christ-idea and is or may be modified by it to an extent the other is not. An emotional process is more vital and potent than a rational process. The "knowledge" thus gained is no more truly knowledge, in fact, it [crossed out: may be] is likely to be less correct and reliable than the knowledge gained by [crossed out: reason and observat] a disinterested exercise of reason and observation, because our sympathies, our love blinds us, but it is more potent knowledge - it is not merely conviction, but it is attraction and influence. But this is true not of Christ merely; it is true of every man or thing. If the flower or the bird awakens no emotion in the naturalist, will he eversentiment, all emotion; he stated nothing as a fact, as a dogma, [crossed out: except] but spoke always in parables. When the people clamored for a literal or an exact statement or some sign or proof, he either turned away from them or else gave them a more oracular statement than before. How vague even his allusions to his own death and resurrection, if such allusions they were. [written vertically on the left margin of the page] The two conceptions of God which have prevailed in the world, namely, as a person or being outside of nature (objective), and as a force identical with nature (subjective) are the work of these two types of mind. - The two types of mind, the objective and subjective the mind that looks out, and the mind that looks in, can never harmonize or come to an agreement. One calls the other hard and matter-of-fact: one visionary and unreal. Religion is subjective, an emotion, a feeling, an aspiration of the soul; science is objective and rests upon demonstration. When the objective or reasoning mind turns to religion, it makes creeds and dogmas, and seeks to prove the literal truth of the Bible. The subjective mind hates creeds and formulas and seeks to live in the spirit. This order of mind says, "Religion cannot be incarnated and settled once for all in forms and creeds and worship. It is a continual growth in every living heart - a new light to every seeing eye." Such men as Frederick Robinson, Bishop Ewing, and the man whom the General Assembly of Scotland deposed, Campbell, Scott, [Erskine?] belonged to the subjective order of minds. They were impatient of the hard limitations of [crossed out: se] the Calvinistic theology. As a religious teacher, Carlyle was intensely subjective. But such men as Whately, Pusey, and all frames and clinchers of theological systems are objective, and seek to satisfy the reason and the understanding. The most subjective of all religious teachers was Christ. Look inward and not outward was always the burden of his teaching. Search the spirit. The kingdom of heaven is within you. How he turned away from the more exact objective inquirers, and gathered about him the simple and the credulous.F. Robinson said that divine truth was of the nature of poetry, "to be felt and not proved." How Christ would be amazed at the hard inflexible systems of theology that have been built up out of his mystical utterances. Objective certainties, or sciences, we cannot have in religion; the dogmas of the Church, the 39 articles, the Westminster Chatecism, do not rest upon proof, but upon assumption. God gave no creed or article of faith to Moses, but commands that had reference to conduct, to concrete social and individual life. "The idea that theology is a fixed science" says Principal Tulloch, "with hard and fast proportions partaking of the nature of infallibility, is a [crossed out: supposition] superstition which cannot face the light of modern criticism." But the Christian world is bound to regard theology as a fixed science and its doctrines as objectively true. One is asked to believe certain statements of alleged facts before the Church will admit one to fellowship. But the truth of religion can no more be demonstrated to the understanding, than the truth of poetry can be demonstrated. Religion is a subjective phenomenon. It is a quality of your spirit or it is nothing. The kingdom of heaven is within you. Except ye becomeas little children etc. It is not a conclusion of the reason, but a feeling of the heart. Heaven and immortality are now and here in this life, or they are nowhere. We see and touch God now or never. Heaven and hell have no objective reality. Immortality is not a continuation of concrete individual life, because continuation implies time; and there is no time in heaven or in the spirit. We shall not live in this sense; we shall not live at all. Where were you and I a century ago? Just where we will be a century hence, nowhere. Time and place know us not. [crossed out: but somewhat]Principal Tulloch evidently belongs to the subjective order of religious teachers. John Stuart Mill, he says, accuses God of being the author of Hell, but this is a poor fallacy as well as a gross caricature, since the "worst hell is that which man makes for himself." This is practically denying the mechanical, objective hell of the popular theology which Mill had in mind. He would doubtless deny the popular or objective heaven too. If religion is a thing akin to poetry or music, and has reference to our present life, and present enjoyment like these, and not merely a definite scheme or course of conduct to escape some futurethreatened doom, then we all want it and can believe in it, but all cannot have it, because we all have not the religious faculty or instinct. It was thus with the Greek or with the Hebrew; why not with us. But we have found in it a reason for ignoring or belittling this life, this world, and for winning as by a game of dice with the devil, a better world to come. The religious feeling or instinct is best employed, when it works inward in the blood and gives a serious, truthful, earnest tinge to life, an impression of deep loyalty to truth and virtue; and concerns itself not at all about cheating the devil out of his dice. How it tinges the great Greek poetshow it tinges Wordsworths poetry; not his Church of England for this was but something tacked on to his mind and in no sense a part of it. Byron had no religion in this sense. Shakespeare but little. Pope but little. Tennyson has more. Arnold has more. Religion as a feeling as a quality of the spirit, and not as a ritual or a creed, is a vital and ever present thing in all first class minds. Emerson had it. Whittier has it. Lowell not much, and our lesser poets not at all. Bryant had it, but much of the so called religious poetry is destitute of it. Milton always had it, when he kept his anglicism in abeyance.That this is the true function of religion, a leaven working in the life, and not a formula stored away in the reason, admits of no doubt. Voltaire had no religion. Tom Paine more. Goethe had much, but Carlyle more; Schiller and Richter more. Plutarch was full of it, as are nearly all the antique authors. Victor Hugo had it, Darwin had it, Mr Moody has it. Ingersoll I should say has very little. Newman is full of it but in most theological treaties it is absent [crossed out: from]. Lincoln was a truly religious man. Beecher is not. It is by no means common amongthe clergy. The biblical writers are the most full of it of all others. Indeed here [crossed out: it] is its great deep, its primordial ocean. There is no religion in Swift - he is thoroughly a worldly mind; there is more in Johnson, but not much here, not much in either of these writers I mean that appeals to the conscience, or touches it. Not a scintilla in such poets as Swinburne or Rosetti. Indeed none of the new poets in England or America possess [crossed out: any] that deep high seriousness which goes with the religious sense. There is more in Gilder than in any of his friends. The type of the religious mind has always been in the world and always willAll attempts to give an objective reality to God, as the sun has an objective reality, will always meet with denial and opposition from many minds; or to give it to immortality or to any spiritual thing, because these things are inward and not outward; they are thoughts or aspirations of the soul, not verifiable, independent existences. A subjective reality they have, they may be as real to the soul as a rock is to the sense. The ideal is not the real, yet mankind is [crossed out: are] constantly seeking to exteriorize the ideal, to view the phenomenon of consciousness as an object of sense. They want a real God like a real king or presidenta real heaven, a better land. They think and speak of these things in terms of our concrete experience, that is, conceive of them objectively, where as they lie in exactly the other direction. There is no moral and intelligent governor of the universe, in the concrete sense, but in the transcendental sense. God is a spirit, and spirit, Coleridge says, is the other side of matter. Spirit is nothing more to our present condition. When people [in pencil: persons] say there is no God and no heaven etc, they mean there is none that can be conceived of in the terms of our earthly knowledge. From this platform all of these things are invisible.Nov 7. Sunday. The ground white with snow this morning - came like a thief in the night 8. The coldest snap of the season thus far. Distant hills still white, a raw windy day. Nov 13. Snow and rain - a typical Nov. day. - Mulford's "Republic of God", a book that seems as if written in a kind of dream - nothing clearly logical or wide awake in it. One fancies him mumbling these things in his sleep. Blackies, "History of Aetheism". The style of this book suggests a man rushing through the house and slaming the doors. It is certainly a noisy style, a good deal of life in it, occasionally coarsewith something of the air of a smart flippant advocate. 23. Yesterday and the day before (Sunday) all sky and sunshine; to-day all gloom and fog and rain. Squarely the other extreme. Finished yesterday and sent off an article to the Forum, A Lay Sermon. 27. Thirty four years ago to-day my little sister Evaline died. I pause and think of her and of that long gone time. Quite a touch of winter, but bright to-day. - The religious jargon does not differ at all from other jargons, it means something to those who use it, but it means nothing to an outsider. I do not at all doubt but that many good people have experiences what they call religion, but it is not a necessary or a universal experience; if it were we should all have it, and I seriously question its value, that is, as a stay to virtue or a stimulus to character. I do not find that those [crossed out: people] persons are as a rule, any better than the others. The best man in a town or community is so irrespective of his religion. Dec. 5 Very cold; down to 8 or 10 above. Had to get up last night at 3 a.m. to thaw out the pipes. A driving snow storm setin this morning from the north; very fine; promises to be severe.Dec 7th The cold continues. Winter indeed has suddenly pounced upon us like a full grown lion. Last night his roaring kept me from sleep, and this morning his breath of frost and snow blinds the day. The river is nearly closed, as I catch glimpses of it through the driving snow, it looks like a mottled plain of white and drab. More rugged winter weather we never have. 17 After a break in winter and a few mild soft days, another cold snap with snow, but not severe; river still open. A domestic storm for several days and nights; only slept three or four hours last night for wifes tongue; all about Julian. - A brute differs from a man in this: the brute has no subjective life, but objective life only; he never looks inward, but outward. The man looks inward as well, thinks about thinking, is conscious of himself etc; that is he has both objective and subjective life. 19 Julian said this morning soon after waking up that he felt as if a great change was coming - "as if a great joy was passing away" - he is beginning to doubt the existence of Santa Claus! Poor boy! Such a discovery does leave a void. How much deeper and more painful a void would have been left in the minds of our fathers, if they had suddenly made the discovery which their children have gradually made that their Santa Claus, the Great Dispenser of the gifts of life etc, was a delusion, a fiction, and that natural law brought all these things to pass. What a chill, what desolation would have possessed their credulous souls! What! No God with whom I can commune, to whom I can pray, whose presence I have so often felt near me, upon whose mercy and love I can throw myself in trial and in sickness and death! Fancy the state of orphanageswhich such a discovery would bring about in the hearts of our fathers! Yet this discovery has come to so many of us, and [crossed out: yet] we are not seriously disturbed; we go on with the [crossed out: old] game of life with quite the old zest, and perhaps have less quaking at the [crossed out: approach of death] thought of the termination of it than our fathers did. We fill up the void with something else; our minds, our spiritual wants adjust themselves to new conditions. The Great Santa Claus is gone, but the good things still come, only they come through unexpected channels, through means that are perfectly comprehensible, and much nearer to us, and muchmore constant in our daily lives than we had supposed; they come naturally and not miraculously. [crossed out: The disem] God no longer sends the rain, or the snow, but they come by the operation of laws as regular in their workings as that which makes the clock strike, or the pendulum swing. The discovery that events so fall out may shock us at first; it takes away the charm of the personal element, the direct benefaction to us, and the charm of mystery. The imagination and the emotions are left cold and unresponsive. The rain would fall, and the spring return just the same if man were not here. It is a terrible shock to our childish pride and egotism, to the filial and family feeling of man, which elects God into a father, solicitous about the good and the love of each member. The truth is the beneficence of God so transcends our conception of it under the symbol of fatherhood, that it seems quite the opposite, or a negative. Shall we then consider this conception of a personal or anthropomorphic God, who makes man and his life, his chief concern, as belonging essentially to the childhood of the race? Why not? If we look upon the belief in faires, in good and evil genii, of demons, of witches, of sorcery, and of signs and wonders, as belonging to the childhood of the race; if these things go with ignorance and infancy as we know that they do, why not [crossed out: the] treat this other belief in a great man - God as belonging to the same category of delusions which the advance of science and civilization must dispell? How well I know the feeling of that little Scottish boy I heard of who as he was passing through a wild and desolate place in the mountains with his parents on their first arrival in this new country, looked about on the [in pencil: savage?] save and inhuman scene and [crossed out: said] asked timidly "Wither is there a God here?" How the wilder and more savage aspects of the huge globe do seem to kill or crush out this warm and intimate belief in a humane God, a God who we think, must be limited to the beautiful and the beneficent, as we are. When one looks out upon the tempestuous winter night, upon the inhuman fury and power of the frost and wind; or when he sees a storm at sea, or thinks of the eternal silence and death of the frigid zones, or of the waves and storms that buffet the sailors in the solitudes of Cape Horn, or on lonely andshores, the billows forever tossing the storms forever stalking, ships and men swallowed up in a twinkling as if they were ants on a leaf - indeed when one sees how the great forces of the globe go careening on irrespective of man or his petty wants - how far off the idea of a personal God who is indeed a father to us, does seem. With me, it kills or overwhelms it entirely. The desolation of the sea drowns God; it makes shipwreck of faith. The utmost that man can arrive at is the certainty that there is a power not ourselves, out of which we have come, the power we call nature, a power that slowly works to higherand more beneficent ends through man and which is careful of man through his own instrumentality but which outside of man knows and regards him not. It is only in later ages that man has been conservative of man. He has on the whole been his greatest enemy. Numbers could hardly reckon up the lives of his fellows he has taken - The same evening Julian remarked with a sadness that went to my heart, "The world has told a great many lies if there is no Santa Claus; making pictures about him and telling so much about him in books."25 Bright and sharp; ground covered with snow. A gloomy Xmas, a domestic earthquake - shock after shock, threatens to bring the roof down. 29 Earthquake shocks still continue, now mild, now severe. A fine skate on the river, ice like glass quite invisible it is so smooth and clear the sensation is like that of flying over the surface of the water. Julian with me with his first skates. 31 Snow yesterday and to-day. Ice all blotted out.1887 Jany 1st Rain and gloom. Earthquake shocks still pretty severe. Trees all covered with ice and creaking in their icy harness. General health very good, less whirling of the head and fluttering of the heart than one year ago, and less of my other peculiar symptoms. But cold feet, the worst I have yet had. No weakness in muscles of arms or legs. Sleep nearly perfect, only if I miss fire the first hour in bed, it goes pretty hard.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: January 11, 1887 - June 23, 1887
Text: By Julian, January 10.1887 January 11th Three years ago this day Father was buried. How the thought comes to me here in my solitude. Today Wife and Julian leave me to board in Poughkeepsie. It may be the end of our housekeeping; it certainly is as the old terms. I had rather live alone in the house, with my dogs, than amid such turmoil as we have had. Now maybe I can read and think. 17 A high-hole today. Snow very deep with a hard crust. Snow and rain last night. 24 Heavy rain; snow half gone...
Show moreBy Julian, January 10.1887 January 11th Three years ago this day Father was buried. How the thought comes to me here in my solitude. Today Wife and Julian leave me to board in Poughkeepsie. It may be the end of our housekeeping; it certainly is as the old terms. I had rather live alone in the house, with my dogs, than amid such turmoil as we have had. Now maybe I can read and think. 17 A high-hole today. Snow very deep with a hard crust. Snow and rain last night. 24 Heavy rain; snow half gone, a regular January thaw. Alone the the house now for nearly two weeks. The dogs and I live on excellent terms. Writing and reading most of the time. The great ice houses here burned up on Friday night, a sublime, but a saddening spectacle. Feb. 6 Still alone in the house. Spent several days last week and week before in N.Y. A very stormy winter; two fair days and then two stormy days -- rain, snow, hail -- with great regularity. Cold too, a cold stormy winter so far. 9 The books that come to me from their withers, why do I look upon them with an eye inclined to be cold and indifferent? and let them lie so long untried upon my table? It is because I did not seek them, and a book unsought is generally a book unwelcome. We do not expect the men we most value and long to see to hunt us up; those who do so generally turn out the be of little moment to us. Moral- never send your book to a man whose good opinion of it you solicit. Let him find it out for himself. I shall act upon this in future. I have sent my books to many people from whom no response has ever come [crossed out: back]. I flatter myself that they never looked into them, and looked upon them as intruders. 13 Sunday. A cold sharp day of dazzling brightness and whiteness. Only small patches of bare ground here tanned there. Sat in my Study and tried to read and write. No success. A sad day from some cause; an unusual melancholy oppresses me. Why I know not. The ice men clearing their canal and getting ready for to-morrow. 17 The white of the paper upon which one writes plays just as important a part in the expression of this meaning as the ink with which he writes 19 Much lightning, thunder and rain last night. Such thumps must break old Winter up. We shall see. 23 Very bright; on the new fall of snow last night. A turtle dove to-day, but silent. Blue-birds several days ago, male and female here and looking into the woodpecker's hole. 25 One of those clear, sharp, strangely bright days out of which come snow storms. That light around the northern horizon is the light of the forge of the Snow Queen. 26 A steady heavy snow all day, the boss storm of the season, 8 or 9 inches of snow. Spent in P. with Wife. On the whole a very stormy winter. A snow storm regularly every second or third day, twenty-five of twenty-six storms so far; never remember to have seen it keep [crossed out: up] on storming so regularly. No very deep snows, but very frequent ones. March 1st Clear, but with more snow in the air yet. Start for Washington tonight. Crossed the river with horse and sleigh. 2 Woke up in Washington this morning, in the midst of spring sights and sounds. A soft mild bright Washington day, grass greening, sparrows signing. What delight to walk again about the beautifuland familiar city where I spent 10 years at the most impressionable period of my life. Aaron and his family well. 3d Still mild and spring like, and [crossed out: still] again I wander in a pleasant kind of dream about the streets. 4 Snow and rain and chill. 6th Snow still on the ground, but melting fast. Dined to day with Hugh McCulloch. The old man not quite [crossed out: to] so well and brisk as when I last saw him. Old age is really upon him, and the end of life's journey not far off. A large, noble, an d lovable man; no public man to whom I feel so drawn.8 A perfect spring day of the kind I used to know so well; clear, soft, still, warm, March in her best mood. Johnson and I go to Piney Branch and Rock Creek late in afternoon. How the old scenes touch my heart! The voice of the little brook fills all the valley with its soft gurgle and murmur. We look for hepaticas, and after we had given up finding any, lo! a single flower upon the dry leaves. How touching and beautiful! J plucks it to send to his dear wife in Paris. If he could have plucked the scene, too, and sent that in a poem!9 Leave W. today at 11 am for Phila. Find Walt about 5 pm. He is sitting in a chair with a long gray bearded goat, or other, skin behind him, a shawl pinned about him, and a chaos of papers, letters, Mss, books, etc., at his feet, and reaching far out in the room. Never saw such confusion and litter; bundles of letters, bundles of newspapers, slips, cuttings, magazines, a cushion or two, foot rests, books open and turned downward, dust, etc. etc., and above all the serene and grand face of the old poet. He is or seems more alert and vivacious than when I saw him in May,inquires anxiously about Wm O'Conner etc; has a little too much blood I think and tell him so. Walks out to supper without help, and tells the story of the old woman who, when commiserated for her blindness says, "But I have so many things to be thankful for!" We have much talk and it does me good to be with him again. He talks affectionately about Beecher, just dead, and says many things in his praise. The word "miscellaneous" he says, describes him. He and Beecher met a few years ago on the Camden ferry. Beecher was very cordial to him and pressed him to visit him in Brooklyn. Wesit by the firelight till 9 pm, when I go back to Phila. 10th and 11th in N.Y. and home at night. Enormous flocks of starlings and blackbirds in N.J. on their way north. 13th Bright and warm. Bees out of the hive, crows cawing far and near; blue-birds and nuthatches uttering their delightful spring calls. Snow still deep and ice on river unbroken. Very glad to be back again in the quiet of my own solitary way of life. The first robin to-day. How delightful his salute sounded.14 Warm and soft, a good sap day. How sweet and touching the little sparrow sang, a clear strong beautiful sparrow song. Tapped two trees and made the first golden maple syrup. A walk up the RR track; skunk cabbage in bloom, saw robins and turtle doves. Julian walked up from Highland to see me, roads very bad with mud and snow. 15 Beecher died on the 7th or 8th while I was in Washington. A man of the times, large, coarse, multitudinous, like the earth in spring when all the streams run full; a man for the multitude, copious, eloquent, versatile, touching our common Americanhumanity at more points, perhaps, than any other preacher of his time. He gave forth no divine light and no divine warmth, [crossed out: but] yet he aroused and warmed and swayed the multitude. He was peculiarly American in his freedom, his audacity, his breadth, and in his secularization of the pulpit. The great source of his popularity was that after all he represented us so well, represented our better tendencies and possibilities. He was alive and showed no tendency to become a fossil. Expansive, copious, quick witted every leading and formative idea of the times found lodgment and reinforcement in his mind. He wasas the sea, and could, on occasion, exhibit the might and vehemence of the great natural forces. 18 Mild, with flutes of sap snow. Julian still with me. Together we try to solve chess problems. The first red shouldered starling this morning as I went over to the P.O. His oka-lee was very suggestive. If we had never seen or known fire how impossible or inconceivable it would be to us. So utterly unlike anything [crossed out: we] else within the whole range of our experience. We could form no conception of it at all -- a mysterious power, or giant slumbering everywhere. and capable almost of devouring the world. Motion or force we know, but how impossible that somethings so unique force, can be evolved or evoked from it! How we should scout the idea of it were it not actually demonstrable! "Latent heat", the philosophers a few years ago called it; now we know that latent heat is transformed force. When we kindle a fire we set a certain chemical process going, a process by which stored up force is again transformed into heat. There is no fire till first there is life or organic growth; and yet there can be no growth or life till first there is heat -- the great solar or cosmic heat. Hence is not every fire we [crossed out: ???] evoke a fragment of that primordial heat which once [crossed out: made] held the earth and all the worlds as vapor? This heat is stored up on every hand, and we summon it forth for our own purposes. No wonder the early races were fire worshippers. Heat or fire is about the most obvious God we can discover today. These thoughts came to me as Julian and I were boiling sap yesterday, out by the spring. March 21 One of those bright still March mornings that may be looked for about this time. All the early birds -- blue-birds, song sparrows, robins, chickadees, nuthatches -- jubilant, Each uttering its peculiar spring note. Two flocks of blackbirds, mostly starlings, go by near my Study; [crossed out: I can] the soft rustle of their wings like a breeze [crossed out: in] suddenly striking a leafy tree, first attracts my attention. How swiftly and directly they go as if to keep an appointment and not a moment to spare. Ten days ago I saw great clouds of them tarrying in N.J. The air has great power of transmitting sounds this morning; as I go over over to the P.O. I distinctly hear the train on the Wallkill valley R.R. 8 or 10 miles away. It bodes rain. Sap starts briskly and it promises to be a [crossed out: rain] day to make the maples thrill. The first little piping frog yesterday (Sunday) afternoon over back of the hill. The marshes [crossed out: and] still covered with ice and snow, the woods full of snow, and only bare spots here and there in the fields. The little frogs were on a bare spot in the edge of the woods. I am convinced that the little frogs do not pass the winder in the swamps but in the ground in bushy fields and in the edges of the woods near swamps. As soon as the ice is gone they make for the swamps to breed and sing. 22 A terrific snow storm, a pouring shower of snow, full six inches in 3 hours in the morning of heavy wet snow. It came down in loose balls as large as chestnuts. Then it went more regularly to work and snowed nearly all day; about 8 inches of wet snow on the ground at night. A regular March storm out of the north. Yesterday saw a large loose flock of crow blackbirds flying over very high, uttering their squeaking, jangling, musical notes. Presently some of them began to drop down toward the trees in the Gordon garden.Then the whole flock after hesitating and wavering a little began to pitch down and it rained blackbirds about that garden for a moment or two, at a great rate. 23 Mrs. B. and Julian came back home today -- Mrs. B. gone since January 10th. Most of that time have I lived alone in the house. Glad to have wife back and hope things will go better in the future. 25 Weather keeps rather warm and thawing. River open to the elbow. Phoebe-bird this morning. Streams and springs have been very full all winter. Never saw them more so. April 1st Overcast; cold north wind -- not a breath of south wind this winter. Sap ran a little yesterday, but too cold most of the time for sap. A very cold spring so far. Ice in the river afloat for several days, broken up by streamers. Phoebe-bird several days ago. Meadow lark day before yesterday. Gloom and sadness in the house.1887 April 3d Sunday. A Sunday indeed. The fairest of the spring days so far, warm bright, delicious. A sit and pen this amid a hum of bees like June. How robin answered robin, and blue-bird called to bluebird, and sparrow challenged sparrow this morning. A phoebe-bird calling before I was up. My 50th birthday, had a century of life, and so little done! A beautiful box of flowers last night from a class in Rhetoric at Fulton, N.Y. Have lost 20 pounds since mylast birthday. Health good as usual; very few of my peculiar symptoms; a weak back lately, and creeping chills on the hip, that is all. Strength good, and but little lameness in my joints. Have slept well till since return of wife, since when I have lost much sleep again. No girl in the house and wife in bad humor; even the dogs are cautious about coming in. 4 A touch of almost summer warmth at last -- 66 degrees -- in the coolest spot. The bees carry in their first pollen to-day. I can imagine the feast they have inside there; new bread is the cry and how eagerly they all take bait. The snow isvanishing like a dream. How gradually but rapidly it fades away, like dew. The greenest grass is the last uncovered by the snow. Lingering patches of snow like your hand, is what remains of large banks of three days ago. So delicate the first snow; so coarse and harsh is this, as if it became grow by tarrying [???] earth. When the snow leaves it looks as if spring and not winter had been tarrying. The first butterfly on Sunday. There have been three types of civilization; the ancient or classical civilization, the ecclesiastical or church civilization and the modernindustrial, democratic, or scientific civilization. How are these three related? What do we owe to each? In what was each superior? To answer these questions well [???] is no easy task. 6 Bright and sharp. Julian and I go out to the old home to make sugar. Reach Roxbury at 11 am; walk up the hill, both of us companying of headache. On top of the hill wind sharp and piercing; makes J. cry with cold. I help him along and carry the bags. As we come in sight of the sugar bush I strain my eyes to see smoke or steam at the "boiling-place"but see none. No sap has been gathered yet. Hiram comes out to greet me as father used to do. After dinner a head ache keeps me in doors all the afternoon. I sit in mother's chair in the sitting room. 7 Still sharp and cold, but clear. Sap runs but little. J. an I build a fire in the arch to thaw out the ice and snow, and cut and hack out of the woods dry trees and branches. 8 Still bright and a little warmer. Indeed a day of phenomenal brightness and clearness. I walk down to Abigail's old placeover the snow-banks, with long long thoughts. Here I find Angie, Jane's girl, with her baby; she and John beginning life and playing the old game over again, with doubtless the same feeling we all know so well. A bright baby, and Angie a pleasing young mother, with sister Jane's hair and complexion. I walk back and cross the hill; shore larks here and there; the ground bare on the top of the hill; so still a lighted candle might be carried; the day dazzlingly bright. Only twice during the day was there the least film in the sky, a slightpenciling or chalk mark in the south and East upon the blue ceiling. On the hill saw a swallow, can hardly believe my eyes, but sure enough, it is a swallow coursing about for insects, which it must find very scarce. Probably the white-bellied swallow; never saw one so early. In the afternoon we gather some sap, two [???] and I start the pans boiling about 4 pm., eager to see the work begin. As I am at work putting in the wood Abe Meeker comes up and greets me, an old friend of the families; worked for Father in 1840 and has visitedthe house yearly ever since. He is near 70 years old, but keeps his courage up well. He is a leaf out of the past and I am glad to peruse him again here by the old arch where he helped father make sugar when I was but 3 years old. Julian has caught a could in his head, has [crossed out: soar] sore throat and keeps me awake this night for several hours. 9 Another bright day getting much warmer. Boil sap on a jump all day. J. builds a pond near by. Snow banks running fast. Reduce 150 pails of sap to 5 by 6 o'clock. 10 Very warm and bright. Too warm for sap to run much. Boil till noon, water, water everywhere and all good to drink. In afternoon walk across the hills to Curtis's place, the old Follet farm. Meet C. and Abe Meeker in his sugar bush. Delightfully warm and still. The old bird voices fill the air. Curtis seems in much better heart since he has got this farm, and a better show for a living. We loiter about for several hours, then I return again across the hills by the old Sylvester Preston place. It is doubtfulif Abe Meeker and I ever meet again. I could see by many remarks of his, that he felt he was nearing the end of life. As we left Curt's sap bush, he said, "it is not likely that we three will ever meet here again." As I came away I remarked that the sun was going down. Yes, said he, and we are going down, too. He spoke of the old people who had died as having gone home. Abe is a bachelor; not a profound or a serious man; a light, quiet, rather genial, canny man who banters you to trade knives. 11 Boil sap all day, 200 pails, warm and partly over cast. Roaring brooks from the snow bankscourse down through the woods and fields. Get my glut of sap boiling to-day. Do not get it reduced to syrup till 8 pm. So dark we leave the syrup in the woods. 12 Cooler today and over cast. A week of dazzlingly bright days are at an end. A change is at hand. Go down to the village with Hiram and he gives me a mortgage on his farm for the 1100 I have signed with him (Paid 600). The looking over the old deeds calls up such thoughts of the past and of father and mother! How my heart yearns for them 13 Back home to-day. Mrs. B. in bad humor as usual and rakes me down. 14 Go to N.Y. to see Walt and be the lecture. I the Century office ran upon Lowell and Charles Elliot Norton. Johnson introduces me to Lowell. L. greets me heartily and says [crossed out: I] "You once said I did not know the difference between a dandelion and the buttercup, but as I was looking down upon them when I wrote the poem (Al Fresco) it did not disturb me." "Oh, I said, I know you do know the difference, Mr. Lowell," and turn it off with a laugh. L. is apretty strong looking man, more than a mere scholar; a man of affairs, and of the world, and able to hold his own in places that test mans mettle. Of his kind he easily ranks first of the New England writers. He said he once advertised me in a speech he made in England at some dinner, or occasion, I forget what, and that many people afterward asked him about me. Of course I thanked him. Norton I was next presented to and found him a very sweet gentle nature, a man to make fast friends with and to love, I should say. He spoke warmly of the pleasure my books had given him etc.Something in his manner of talking reminded me constantly of an English woman I know (Mrs. Smallwood) We met again at the lecture and I sat in a box with him and Lowell. Found Walt at the Westminster hotel, fresh and rosy and sweet as ever. The lecture went off finely. A distinguished audience and much sympathy with him and appreciation of him. At the reception in the evening saw many new people. Walt looked grand and distinguished as he sat in his chair and received the callers. His is easily the grandest face and form in America. He stood it well; the littleexcitement was just what he needed, a wholesome human breeze that quickened his circulation and made his face brighten. At 12 pm John Fiske and some one else came in and began to discuss the immortality of the soul. Walt said he would have given anything to have away got to his room and to bed, and as some one else caught on to the discussion, he did so. In the morning at 8 I found him dressed and resting from his bath, and as fresh as a pink. At 10 he went to the photographers with Jennie Gilder and then to the studio of Miss Wheeler for a sitting. Think Miss W. will make a strongpicture of him. I left him at 2 1/2 pm, on his way to the ferry, brighter and stronger then I had ever expected again to see him. 16 Home to-night. 17 Sunday, A bright, rather sharp day. J and I walk to the woods, find arbutus showing the pink. 18 A driving snow storm all day; a foot of snow on the ground at night. 19 Bright; looks like mid-winter. 20 Snow still covers the ground. 21 Warmer. Snow nearly gone. In my walk up the RR track this afternoon found five species of wild flowers in bloom, where the snow must have been lying yesterday, namely arbutus, hepatica, dicentra, saxifrage and blood root. The place was warm and sheltered. Some of the dicentra had evidently been nipped by the frost. 22 The loveliest of April mornings -- clear, soft, still and vocal with bird notes. First swallow twittering above the barn as I stepped out doors at 6. The swallow twittering above the barn as I stepped out doors at 6. The swallow is always on hand by this date and seldom earlier than the 20th. Vegetation is much more irregular [crossed out: than] in itsunfolding than are the birds in their arriving. I have had asparagus at tis date, but it is at least a week later this season. The song of the purple finch and of the russet sparrow the most noticeable this morning. The call of the high-hole has also been a marked feature in vocal nature these several days. 24 A rare April day. Julian and I take a long walk to the woods for wintergreen berries and other less tangible things. Seem to have seen the real beauty of the adders tongue for the first time. As we stood there beyond the bridge talking withSherwood, discovered two by the road side, just opened. The sunshine was falling full upon them, and with their recurved petals or perianth, and long purple anthers, they looked so brisk, fresh, lively, delicate, that [crossed out: ??? I] they gave me an impression I had never before had. They were not drooping, but looking the sun fairly in the face, and apparently laughing all over. Then a little later we discovered one that had come up protected by a large lichen covered stone. The flower with its fresh canary-yellow and new spotted leaves wasset squarely against the face of the stone, and we paused and admired it and commented upon it. Under some hemlocks where the old snow banks yet lingered, the adders tongues were piecing the leaves like awls. They did not raise the leaves, but pushed up through them, making a smooth round hole. 25 April is doing her best now, clear, warm, wooing days, that affect one like music.Since last July I have written the following papers: A Taste of Kentucky Blue Grass, In Mammoth Cave Science and Theology, The Modern Skeptic, The Natural and the Supernatural, Mere Egotism, Spring Jottings, Observations of Nature (two last in The Chautauquan), Early Spring Sounds, The Ethics of War, A Hint from Franklin, Reason and Predisposition, besides other short papers, snot yet ready for printing, yes, and a short paper on Beecher, for the memorial vol.May 1 Sunday. A warm, clear, delicious day, a breath out of the South at last -- not a wind so much as an influence -- a breath. Julian and I walk to the woods and sit a long time by the falls, very full and beautiful just now. Arbutus very scarce this season, the vines barren. This is not the arbutus year, though I never knew it to fail before. The grass very green now; before there is any greenness on the trees how pleasing is the green sunlit landscape shining through brown branchesor framed in gray bowls, or rocks. In the morning J. tells me of a horrid dream he had last night, said he was so glad when he woke up and found it was only a dream -- He said a black spot came upon his hand and the longer he looked at it the worse it looked. It was blacker than anything could be; the ray of it came through the arm. He said he thought it was the light of Hell" A very vivid conception. Today J. said, Isn't it curious that the Chinese were [crossed out: ???] about the first nation that knew any thing, and nowthey are about the last nation that don't know anything." Subject for an Essay -- "The Return to Nature." The arbitrary ways of the ancients -- building cities out of hand, not a growth, but built by power. Their mythology and artificial views. The violence to nature by Christianity, witchcraft, etc. Shakespeare plays sound very artificial. The return to Nature among the moderns, cities grow, natural tendencies are followed etc. Return to nature in art, literature, and religion, etc., etc., and medicine.2d A warm, soft, sunshiny day, pretty hot. The influence from the South still prevails. Maple buds unpacking their fringe. What a stir in all the farm homesteads this morning throughout the land. It fills me with sadness and longing to think of it. The ten thousand plows that are started, the picking up and putting things in shape, the scattering of the manure etc. The first oats are being sowed, the farmer strides across the furrows scattering the grain, while the first brown thrasher calls and warbles i the near tree. Sixty years ago myfather was sowing his first oats on his farm they had just purchased. Think how busy and active he and mother were in those days there upon the farm they had just purcha[crossed out:c]sed. Think of all their struggles there, their economies, their simple fare, their small earnings, their anxieties, and their happiness, tho' they may have known it not. Ah, me, my heart is ready to burst when I think of t all, and they now so still in their graves. Whether the oats are sowed or not or the corn ground got ready, or the butter made, they heed it not. We, J and I go to the woods with a lot of P. [Poughkeepsie] schoolgirls forarbutus, and other flowers. 3d The cat-bird and oriole here this morning, taking up the strain where they dropped i last summer. Still soft and warm. Mrs. B. absent to Eden's since last Saturday. The kingbird, and wood thrush and many warblers in the afternoon. 4 The perfection of early May weather; how green the fields, how happy the birds; how placid the river; how busy the bees, how soft the air -- that kind of weather in which there seems to be dew in the air all day - the day a kind of prolonged morning -- so fresh, so wooing, so caressing. The baby leaves on the apple trees have doubled in size since last night. 11 May warm and wooing so far. Pear trees in bloom and appeals showing the color, and some in full bloom. All the fruit trees touched with a mist of green. How tender and suggestive they look. Inside the house, storm and uproar, as usual. Just now the leaves and branches of the young hickories are being born. They come intothe world like young birds or young puppies. The great hickory buds grow and swell and color up till they are often two inches long when the fleshy sheath parts and the young branch, leaves and and all emerge[crossed out: s]. The leaves are folded up and pressed together like hands in prayer. The great flesh colored membranous scales or wraps, how curious they look. They turn back and surround the tender branch like a purple or crimson ruffle, and then after a few days, drop off and perish. I do not know of any other tree whose branches [crossed out: come into the world] spring from the parent bud so fully developed.How many [crossed out: people] persons there are, even cultured and thoughtful [crossed out: people] persons who believe in the literal truth of the Bible story of the Flood and Noah and his ark etc. That God became so disgusted with the race of man the he determined t drown them out as we do vermin, or superfluous kittens and puppies, saving only enough for seed. It is easy enough to believe in all these things if we once start with a certain conception of God in our minds. If we set out with the theory that this universe is governed by a great man-like being who works and feels and fails etc. as man does, and who manipulates Nature etc., as a man manipulates and runsa machine, all these curious notions come natural and easy. Once accept the popular notion of God as the great Santa Claus and we can even bear him when he comes down the chimney. The belief in miracles, in the fall of Adam, and in the flood, etc all hinge[crossed out: s] upon the notion that God is a man, and man of gigantic powers, but still a man, a sovereign King and Ruler. 24 A remarkably hot and dry May. No rain at all, and thermometer from 80 to 86 since the 10th. Grass suffering much. Went up Snyder Hollow, wifeJulian and I on the 18th; stayed two days, Trout scarce, 28 in all, but had a fairly good time. Stopped at Lords. No thoughts these days and but little reading. Life thin and unprofitable. May 29 A slight rain yesterday and slow drizzle to-day, but not enough to stop the [crossed out: beek] bees working, yet doing much good. As dry a May as I ever saw. Reading Tom Jones, and the current papers and magazines with thoughts toward Colorado first of July. June 1 11 am A fine rain at last from the N.E. began in the night and has kept it up nearly ever since. Never was rain more needed. Finished Tom Jones this morning. Wife upbraids me for reading the book; can't see how a book with so much foulness in it can give me any pleasure. "What help can it be to you?" she asks. Such a mind as hers can never understand the disinterested point of view. Hers is the personal point of view in all things. Tom Jones is a great literary masterpiece. Why Cardinal Newman cannot see God in the world (see his Pro Vita Sua) is because he is looking for a man-like being. He is completely dominated by the old theological notion that God is a man, a very great one, it is true, but still a man a great Pope or ecclesiastical Father, and of such a being, it is true the world gives no hint. We are to remember of God, that his ways are not as our ways or his thought as our thoughts. "Art thou a man" says Job, that we should come together in judgement". No, thou art not a man, thou art the All. When Newman looks into his conscience then he thinkhe sees God; these human traits and ideals and aspiration which he sees there, he calls, God. Who is it, or what is it, then, which we see in Nature and this world? June 8 Julian and I go down to West Point and spend the day. Met young Ed Denton, a school boy of mine 24 years ago, and spend most of the day with him. A fine, hearty man, and a capital botanist. The mock battle of the cadets takes J. much and tickles me too. Mrs. B. still in the dismal dumps. No thoughts these days and no zest for life; seems as if[crossed out: I was] my intellectual life never was at so low an ebb, no interest in anything. Cherries getting ripe but no strawberries yet. Rye in bloom, grapes just blooming. Pretty warm and rain needed. Went up and hived a swarm of bees for Dick Martin. 16 Warm and dry. A visit from Mr. Denton of West Point, a former pupil of mine, a fine man. Spent the day in the woods. The showy cypripedium in bloom. A great treat to Denton who is a fine botanist and a genuine lover of plants and of the wild. A visit from such a man, serious, earnest, and genuine does me good. He gives me a watch in his enthusiasm over the flowers there in the swamp and Igive him a set of my books. In the afternoon I take him another way, and we find the whorled pogonia, another new orchid to him, but blossoms fallen. 18 Hot and dry. Plenty of fine strawberries. God in most of our hay this week. Days without thought or observation. 19 A delightful shower; oh so delicious. Such a rain at such time seems to bathe ones very soul. 23d Rain, rain; too much, ushered in by a cracking thunder shower early Tuesday morning. The sky has all turned to cloud and moisture, a steady pour for the past 12 hours. Well, nearly full.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1887-1888
Text: 1 I R, ‘K-IL 6 ’\,_ . 2% ﬂ./%/./M 2/’~’-'1/W7 %_ / w¢%J/6/J3“ /5?? Q 1(-\ Oct 21 That is a curious fact (if it be a fact) which I am told by Dick Martin, who used to be a sort of pot-hunter, namely, that he has often known [crossed out: a] his dog to pick up a wood cock in its mount and twice a partridge. The birds would sit while the dog was approaching them upon their trail, till he came up and seized them. This is probably the whole explanation of snake charming; it is entirely a...
Show more1 I R, ‘K-IL 6 ’\,_ . 2% ﬂ./%/./M 2/’~’-'1/W7 %_ / w¢%J/6/J3“ /5?? Q 1(-\ Oct 21 That is a curious fact (if it be a fact) which I am told by Dick Martin, who used to be a sort of pot-hunter, namely, that he has often known [crossed out: a] his dog to pick up a wood cock in its mount and twice a partridge. The birds would sit while the dog was approaching them upon their trail, till he came up and seized them. This is probably the whole explanation of snake charming; it is entirely a subjective process. The snake does not exercise an direct power over the bird, but the bird is Oct 31 A day out of the north, clear, sharp, invigorating, dry. Several degrees below freezing last night. Pretty well now adays, sleep well and eat well, but few or not thoughts. Am reading History of the Jews, and scientific and religious works. Nov 1st A tremendous wind from the north; day like raving maniac bent on demolishing the world. It almost blows the hair off a dog. The little steamer can not make her return trip from P. The wind roared all night so I could not sleep. Never have I seen the river look rougher than to-day. Oct 31 A day out of the north, clear, sharp, invigorating, dry. Several degrees below freezing last night. Pretty well now adays, sleep well and eat well, but few or not thoughts. Am reading History of the Jews, and scientific and religious works. Nov 1st A tremendous wind from the north; day like raving maniac bent on demolishing the world. It almost blows the hair off a dog. The little steamer can not make her return trip from P. The wind roared all night so I could not sleep. Never have I seen the river look rougher than to-day. -- I think there is something inherent in our nature against our returning to the old place of our birth; change is so essential to the longevity and health of the reach. Nature has made us averse to going back; she would scatter us as far as possible 8 -- Delicious Indian Summer weather now for some days, and promises to continue, very smoky; everybody is burning leaves and rubbish. Busy setting out grape vines. 24. Pretty busy the last few weeks in the vineyards. Much fine weather but the last week rather cold, freezing quite hard at night. To-day cloudy and smoky and chilly from the north. Just now a large flock of wild geese called me out of doors. They went squaking southward. Winter must be close behind them. No snow here yet. Pretty well these days, but no thoughts. -- I think it saves much confusion to regard religion as quite distinct from morality, or the right conduct of life -- as having necessarily nothing to do with these, but as a system of faith and worship -- a belief in something extra natural. The Children of Israel had a marked religion, but little morality, as we practice it. Indeed the most religious peoples are byno means the most moral. Hence it is in individuals that religion so rarely changes the man, or makes him practically any better. Let us keep things sep[crossed out: e]arated, religion by itself morality by itself. Religion [crossed out: as] implies a belief in the supernatural, in a personal deity who talks and sides with or against us. A man may be pure, noble, virtuous, high minded, spirited etc. and not have religion. Religion and superstition are close akin. Hence religion may be dispensed with; the world is fast outgrowing it. See passage in Goethe's Autobiography p 114. The world is saved by morality and not by religion. Christianitylays great stress upon the virtues makes them indispensable, makes right conduct the main thing; and yet right conduct is not Christianity. To be a good man is not necessarily to be Christian. 2[crossed out:6]5 Dense fog all the morning. Now at 10 1/2 a.m. it begins to break and the Albany and Troy night steamers emerge from the obscurity and go laboring by; huge craft [crossed out:wet] monsters of the night which we never see unless the are belated. They do not have the grace and beauty of the day steamers. They are not meant to be seen. Yesterday was also a thick day. They boys on the little Black called it a wild goose day. Such large flocks of geese were seen. We saw three large flocks, and heard them too, quite as much as we saw them. One large flock settled down out in the river this side of Hyde Park. 26. More gees again to-day -- two great harrow shaped flocks going South. Warm and moist 27. Warm and May like; bees humming. The belated night steamers go by looking awkward and embarrassed. The Drew like a small floating mountain. Thirty-five years ago to-day my little sister Eveline died. What changes since then! Dec. 1st [crossed out: D] The steel-clad days are upon us; hard, dry, cold, brilliant. The cold wave struck us last night and the wind roared all night like a maniac, and the full moon all the while shining so placidly. Thermometer fell from thirty to ten, and this morning the river is steaming and the earth is aching with cold. The ponds are covered with black ice, and ice appears here and there in the fields. My days mostly empty and barren. Sleep well again; probably the result of work in the open air of which I have done a good deal the past month.2d Still cold and hard, but over cast and threatening snow. First floating ice on the river this morning. 6 A bright, still, beautiful Dec day. Walk to the Elbow and back. A fine bracing walk. 10 Beautiful still days nearly all this week. Bees humming about some days; looks like an open winter. Work in the open air with George nearly every day. 11 Rain and fog; warm. A bundle of MS. from a Brooklyn publisher (A.F.Farnell; never heard of him before), for me to read and pronounce judgement upon. Subject, The Infinite, a book of infinite folly. Never saw a neater and more shapely MS. Looks like the work of a gentleman and a scholar. Strong, clear, fluent hand; runs amuck through all modern scientific theories and conclusions. Has chapters headed, The Beginning, The Method, The Fixed Order, Planetary Formation and Development, Evolution, The Glacial Theory, Inorganic Development (3 chapters) Organic Development (2 chapters) The High Development. It is interesting for the novelty andboldness and absurdity of its views. It is so curious that I read and read. The main idea is that the universe is all one piece and is constantly growing like a tree or a cabbage. The Earth is growing and will one day be [crossed out: ???] as big as the sun or bigger. The sun was once like the Earth. The moon is not dead, but not yet alive; will by and by be like the Earth; then like the sun, etc. The comets are germs of worlds not yet developed. They are now sowing their wild oats. The Earth is not cooling. The sun is not hot. The interior heat of the Earth isin some ay the result of the decomposition of the air. The glacial theory is all humbug. The scratches on the rocks are the same as the lines on your fingernails or on leaves or on the trunks of trees -- lines of growth. The rocks grow, grains of sand and pebbles grow. The strange drift-boulders set down upon our hills etc. have travelled vertically, not laterally. They are forced out of the ground as the bark is forced off the trees etc. River terraces are accounted for in the same way. The growth and expansion of the earth lifts themup and spreads them apart etc. Light and heat and electricity do not come from the sun; but power comes from the sun. Gravitation is a delusion; it is all one force. Color is made all the while, so is matter. "There can be no material and necessary causation. Matter is the action of Force; Force is a function of mind" "The universe is a universe of mind". "We are able to see worlds begin, the whole system is one body through which there is a circulation as of sap in plants and blood in animals -- The vital energy flows from the sun, returns as regularly and constantly as itcomes -- light and heat are not radiated through space - planetary supplies are not affected by distance -- power alone is conveyed from the sun to the planets -- the power which lights and heats each planet returns again to heat and light the sun" --"The vital energy of plant and animal life is the vital energy of the earth and the solar system and the universe." "When the Earth's is 50000 miles in diameter the present surface may yet appear in a few patches and to geologist of that day then will represent the Azoic age." Remains of ancient cities and civilizations are found buried deeplybelow the surface. Why? Because the Earth has grown up over them as a tree grows over a nail. etc. etc. The author boldly harnesses many of the [crossed out: ???]facts of science into the support of his theory. He seems well read in the modern scientific authors. His main idea is that the development of the universe is vital and not mechanical. What if this fool should be right? It is a pleasing idea, that all things are alive. No theory of light, of gravitation, of heat, that Science has yet found is satisfactory to me, but the absurdities in this mans system are so glaring thata child could detect them. 14 Indian Summer in Dec. -- days soft, clear, still, river like a mirror yesterday and today, freezes but little at night. Work each day with George hauling earth into the vineyard. Winter seems unable to get a permanent foot hold. 18 Our first snow last night, nearly a foot fell while we were in bed; ground but little frozen; good sighing. Blank profitless days to me. 25. A dull Christmas; bad head-ache and severe cold; sit in my chair all day. Bright and cold, good sleighing. 1888 January 1st Another New Year. The day rainy with snow [crossed out: ice]on the ground and clinging to the trees -- the air thick with vapor and fog. River closed to near the Elbow. Much ice on the trees. Yesterday morning the mercury but 3 or 4 degrees above zero; this morning 32 or 33 above. Health pretty good, sleep good. Just trying to work a little on a new vol. "In door Studies". Hacking away at the Essay on Arnold and Emerson. -- Find myself reading over and over aloud a poem in the current Century by J.W. Riley, called "The Old Man and Jim". not great poetry, but meets ones hunger for something human and pathetic, something eloquent that makes the tears start. In the desert of Century poetry, this is a green live thing, if only a weed. January 4 While eating breakfast this morning I saw through the window a fox run along over the hard snow 8 or 10 rods below the house. He trotted out in the currant patch and disappeared toward van Benschotens. He did not seem at all frightened and was in no great hurry. The sun was not yet up but the light was strong on the white surface. It was the first fox I have ever seen in this place, though I have seentheir tracks quite close to the house. I love to think of that wild cunning creature passing over my lawn and amid my currant bushes just as if I were not near, or as if it were a remote mountain lot. 10 A very bad cold, a regular bronchitis for past week. Confined to the house or 4 days. Read Lewes' Life of Goethe, and Boswell's Johnson. 11 Mrs B. accuses me of selfishness because I said my cold was worse than hers. She is not even willing that I shall have the worst cold. -- Religion is a system of faith and worship founded upon a belief in the existence of superhuman beings who may be angered and propitiated by our words and deeds. In all ages this has been the basis of religion, and without some such belief there is no religion. There may be virtue, morality, but not religion. There may be virtue, morality, etc. but not religion. Hence I can never have religion, and do not want it, because I cannot believe in the Supernatural. I can contemplate the facts of life and death without quaking, or without any fear of what lies beyond. -- In writing a poem your thought and feeling must be so large and strong the you can use the commonest images and words no matter what, indifferently. That is, you are not to claim anything on account of your language and tropes; the poetry in you is to make those quite secondary. Poetical language does not make a poem. A true poetic thought makes a poem out of un-poetical language. January 15 We have reached the period of winter storms -- a storm of snow or rain or both, every other day now for some time. 22. Looking at the sky alone one would say it was one of the most mild and genial of days, so soft and placid and gently the day looks, but this morning the thermometer was from 10 to 18 below in this vicinity. No wind, no cloud; it is cold without an effort. The winter has waxed storing before we knew it. 23 Still colder and winter entirely at his ease. No bluster, no effort, but the cold comesas quietly as a summer day. 25 Still below zero, and still the day is placid and quiet, and the sun bright. Began to cut ice yesterday on the river. 27 Eight or ten inches of very dry snow night before last, followed by a high wind which lasted nearly 24 hours. Never saw such drifts since I have lived here. The road drifted full in many places. At my gate the drift is nearly as thigh as my head; ten feet high near Esopus. -- On the whole Arnold's style is more acceptable to me that Newman's, [crossed out: when he keeps] though of the two men I like Newman best. But Arnolds style is more compact and telling; it is not so much an apparatus, but more a personal matter. Newmans is more stately but less vital, there is more empty comb in his periods, faultless comb though it be. Indeed there is a suggestion of hollowness about Newmans style that never occurs to one in reading Arnold. He is a speaker, a preacher, and we miss in the writing something which we should not miss in the spoken discourse. This empty comb would be filled by the voice and presence of the speaker. Nothing can be more easy and lucid than his page, but it does not afford quite enough resistance to the mind; it donnas not stimulate quite enough; he does not put his mind to yours with quite enough vigor. Arnold is preeminently a writer, and not a speaker; his spoken discourse makes less impression than his printed essay. A thing to be heard seems to have a different focus from a thing to be read. That which reads well is more private, personal and near. There is / such the difference there is between a hotel and a private home. One is easier pleased in public than in private; when he is with the multitude he thinks and feels [crossed out: as] with the multitude; what delighted one inpopular assembly has a different look in the privacy of ones closet; distance no longer lends enchantment. You have the gem in your hand now and can see its real qualities. 28 About my only reading these rugged winter days is Boswells Johnson. Johnsons bearishness, his temper, his arguing for victory, his love of applause etc., were not traits of greatness -- all these things are deductions. No great thought or view ever escapes him. How contemptable his hatred of America; his views of most foreign countries are narrow. He had a narrow mind any way. But his conversation was remarkable. Hismind was wonderfully discriminating, and was so instantly, quick as a flash. His sentences are like leveled deadly rifles; they do not go off vaguely in the air; they are aimed at the subject and hit it squarely. He seems to have been pious and religious mainly from fear; just as he wrote mainly from want; fear narrowed and darkened his mind. He believed God to be another touchy and acrimonious Dr Johnson. Yet one comes, in Boswells pages, heartily to love the old bear. He bowed very low and elaborately before all kinds of dignitaries. There was not a spark of poetry in him [crossed out: as] that I can see. He did not make one verse or line thatstill lives. He said he had lived so long in London that he did not remember the difference of the seasons. 28 Still very cold; a blizzard for three days; at zero or [crossed out:???] below nearly every mooring. A total eclipse of the moon to-night, the first I ever saw. The moon seemed to be covered by a piece of smoked glass. It hung there in the eastern sky [crossed out: like] a dim coppery ball that gave no light. Julian first discovered that something was wrong. He went out of doors and on coming in again, said he had such a queer feeling when he went out, and on looking aboutfound that the moon was the cause. He said it looked very strangely. It was biter cold but there was not a cloud in the sky. The shadow on its face seemed thickest and darkest toward the top. By and by the [crossed out: ???] lower edge or limb began to shine out. Then it was very interesting to watch it slough off this dark opaque skin. It was like a bursting, swelling, developing process. The bright, clean limb of the moon, how it protruded from this confining shell or crust. It seemed to swell out till the impression was precisely as if the luminous part was confined by a copper case, like a cork by a bottle, and was slowlygetting free. How surely an ignorant people would have said [crossed out: something] the moon [crossed out: ???] was passing through some crisis, was being confined and held by some dark object which yet was unable to keep it. It was like a bud in spring bursting out of its scales. For this swelling protruding effect I was not prepared. When the eclipse was half off, the moon looked elongated, and as if the freed part was much larger than the confined part. By and by the shadow was only a little round cap that sat upon the head of our round faced friend like that of an English soldier. One half expected to see the cap burst and the expanding edge of the moon to show at the edge, but it did not; it was slowly crowded off and the large free moon again rode the heavens in triumph. 31 The news comes from home that Hiram K., Curtis's oldest boy died Friday. Why the news should cast such a gloom over me I hardly know. Probably because I know what a blow it will be to Curtis and to all the family and what a gloom has settled upon them. Hiram K. had become rather a worthless boy and I fear there was little prospect of his mending. The Grand blood in him was bad blood. A quiet boy of few words, a good worker, but unsettled and a spend thrift.Feb. 1 Came to Poughkeepsie to-day to board. 3d Boarding place a fraud; had to get out; had a row with the woman; the most impudent piece of flesh I ever saw. 4 Settled in a new place where wife was ten years ago; looks much more promising. Still feel the disgust and humiliation of yesterdays jangle with the woman -- and anger that I finally gave in to her and let her mulct me out of 10 dollars which was not her due. If it had been a man we would have come to blows, either with our fists or the law. But who would strike a woman with either? and a lone widow at that?-- When Boswell told Dr. Johnson that he had several times seen with his own eyes a scorpion, on being placed within a circle of burning coals retire to the center and commit suicide by darting its sting into its head Johnson denied the fact. In this case he showed the spirit of a true man of science -- he demanded proof of the [crossed out: fact] statement. Appearances are deceptive; the eye alone is not always to be trusted. If the great anatomist Morgagni after dissecting a scorpion on which the experiment had been tried should certify that its sting had penetrated its head, that would be convincing. And yet the next moment Johnson said Swallows sleep allwinter in the bed of a river or pond, "conglobulated" into a ball. The scientific spirit which he ad just displayed would have required him to insist upon the proof of the alle[crossed out: d]ged fact, as in the case of the scorpion. How the whole world of alle[crossed out:d]ged fact shrinks and dwindles when rig[crossed out: e]orous scientific tests are applied to it. Probably two thirds of all popular notions and beliefs with regard to natural phenomen[crossed out: on]a, are directly opposed to the truth. -- Dr. Murray of the Challenger says that the average height of the land above the sea is about 2250 feet, while the greater part of the sea [crossed out: is] averages 12,000 ft deep.He says that if the land [crossed out: was] were all thrown into the sea and made level, the seal would still cover the earth's surface [crossed out: at] to a depth of two miles. If the amount of Earth [crossed out: was] were increased to any extent, [crossed out: in such a case] would not the sea still cover it to nearly the same depth? that is, if the [crossed out: Earth] solid matter only displaced the water and did not absorb it. It would simply lift the sea up; the whole of the sea is bound to be on top, no matter how much land there is. Feb. 14 Bright and quite warm. Snow very deep. The secret of the success of Christianity is the attraction which the character of Christ, as presented inThe four gospels, has for the Western or occidental mind, backed up by the conviction that he was more than human and therefore authoritative. All that is claimed for [crossed out: Chris] the Christ -- ideal in the way of changing and renovating the character, and begetting the Christian trait of saintliness, is to be admitted. There is no personage in history who touches and moves men in just this way, owing largely to the miraculous and apocryphal character of him as presented by the gospel writers. Of course this view of him was owing to the belief in the miraculous and supernatural which was the atmosphere through which all events were read at that time. Presented simply as a man, his teachings would probably havehave reached no farther than those of Apolonius of Tyrana. Of course the value of the saintly Christian character may be questioned. It is not the best or most serviceable for this world. It is not chiefly meant for this world, but for some other The old saints in whom we see these things pushed to extreme were a nuisance to this world; they lived entirely for some other, and were as selfish in their way as the grossest worldling. But in any view it is not to saintliness that we are indebted for the progress of the world or the evolution of man, but quite different qualities. But the time has come when the miraculous and authoritative character of Christ, which has been such a power in the world, can no longer be believed. We havereached a point in the progress of the race, where the claims of reason and nature can no longer be ignored, if indeed we want to ignore them. The scientific habit of mind is in the ascend[crossed out: e]ant. We cannot believe historical Christianity if we want to. We are bound to look upon Christ as a man, and to let go entirely this curious "plan of redemption" of the orthodox churches. Whatever evils follow, whatever sacred edifice totters and falls, [crossed out: we] religion must be brought in a line with natural events. Christianity must stand upon its merits to save man in this world, and must take its place as only one of the religions with which man has sought to cheer his journeythrough the wilderness of this world. Christ's gospel was for the meek and the lowly, the poor in spirit, and was distinctly hostile to the rich, the proud, the powerful. It was the gosp[crossed out: i]el of benevolence and good will, then a new gospel in the world. The poor, the oppressed, the outcast were the special subjects of its bounties. Hence the old saints by their poverty, their humiliations and modifications of the flesh, thought to reap a hundred fold, of its blessings. They more wretched they were in this world, the more blessed they hoped to be in the next. Monasticism was a kind of tumorous growth upon this aspect of the gospel of Christ. It was saintliness preying upon the world like a can[crossed out: s]cer. But how subordinate a part the meek and lowly [crossed out: ???] sentiment of Christs gospel plays in popular Christianity. The rich and the powerful and the arrogant seem to have appropriated Christ especially to themselves. The three great evils of the world Christianity has been powerless to remove, war, avarice, and intemperance -- the two former, important factors in the worlds progress, the latter a perversion and a waste. The teaching of Christ are personal and individual and are not at all adapted to national ends. No government could be founded upon them. They mean the disintegration of nationality. Nations are necessarily selfish; they grow more or less byantagonism. What is for the good of the nation is often to the injury of the individual and vice versa. The Polytheism of Greece and Rome [crossed out: were] was a national and public religion[crossed out: s]. The individual was ignored and the nation exalted. Their gods were gods of the nation; their alt[crossed out: e]ars and statues were in the public squares. Buddhism on the other hand was allied to Christianity, in that it was more personal and private, and did not foster nationality. It had little political significance. Where does Christianity appear in the politics of England, or Germany, or Russia, or America? It does not appear, it is directly the opposite of the theories and practices upon which they rest. Even a protective tariff is inimical to the spirit of Christianity. Feb 19. I wonder if the literary gift -- the gift of expression be not at the expense of a man's practical judgement and ability to deal with natural affairs. Many cases might be cited to prove it. Literary geniuses are usually fools in practical matters, and great political orators are rarely great statesmen. Mastery of words does not mean a mastery of things, but usually just the reverse. I notice that among physicians those who run a good deal to the pen or the tongue and become eminent there, are by no means the most skilled practitioners. The great doctor is rarely a great writer on medicine, or a [crossed out: g] great general a great writer on the tactics or on the art of war, or a great artist a critic of art. Feb 26. How the idea of God, or of the part he plays in the world has steadily receded or grown dimmer during the past 3 or 4 hundred years. Comets, earthquakes storms, famine, pestilence, etc, etc, were once considered the visible tokens of Gods wrath or displeasure. Now natural law has almost dethroned God; even among orthodox [crossed out: people] persons he is hardly recognized in the objective world, and maintains his footing only in the subjective or spiritual world. I suppose the time will come when the old God of our fathers or Jehovah of the Jewish scriptures, will entirely fade from men's beliefs. It is but a little while ago that eminent theologians maintained that fossils, and the Silurian monsters(wriiten upon March 12) (March 5) On Monday, March 5th, my little dog "Laddie", my fourth dog, met is end, murdered like Lark by Dick Atkins vicious brute. I went up home on the 10 am train. George was at the depot and told me Laddie was killed a few moments before, [crossed out: by] He was following George when he fell in with a small dog near Atkins between whom and himself, it seems, there was a standing feud; whenever and wherever they met they fought. George went on and left them fighting, thinking no harm would come of it. Presently the old dog heard the fracas and came out and pitched into the smallest dog, as is his custom, and in a few moments Laddie was left for dead. When I came to him about an hour afterward I saw he was still alive.(March 12) I lifted him up and laid him on the dry grass where the sun shone warm upon him, and protected him from the wind with some boards. He breathed and winked, but did not recognize me. Three hours later I came to him and seeing him still alive I spoke to him as of old. He made no sign, but instantly all his wounds, which had dried up in the sun, began to bleed afresh. My voice quickened his pulse and the bloody drops began to trickle down all over his poor bruised body. It cut me to the heart. They were like bloody tears appealing to me for help. Shortly afterward (I had returned to P.) he breathed his last. I loved him much, how much I did not know till he was gone, as is always the case. And his (March 12) love for me was unmeasured. He had many virtues and but few defects -- only these two -- he would run and bark after persons on the road if they drove fast, and he would go away from home when I was away. He was even come to P. to look me up. 13 The demon of the storm is at last laid -- snow from 2 to 8 feet deep, at least 2 on the level. This will be called the Great Storm -- such an one as comes but once or twice in a century. It is certain that I have never seen the like before. The streets of the city are all but impassable. Not a team has yet been out (10 a.m.) and the foot men take to the middle of the (Feb 26) and the geologic disturbances were the result of a struggle between God and Satan, the one striving at Cosmos, the other at chaos. March 12 A violent snow storm after a week of bright clear sharp weather; the most violent storm of the season. Began snowing last night and now at 9 a.m. about 15 inches of snow have fallen and the storm is increasing in violence all the time. Air full of driving snow. The teams and foot passengers go wallowing by. Still in P; expected to go home to-day to begin farm work. A typical storm. now at 12 M. The storm is a regular blizzard, air full of driving snow. 6 P.M. Storm continues with unabated fury; snow nearly 2 feet; not a moments let up all day.(March 13) street. An occasional woman goes along and falls down every few rods. From my window I see drifts 8 feet high in front of the houses. Where the side walks are cleared the effect from the street is that they have been throwing up high breastworks. The heads of the passers are just visible behind them. It is said that in '57 there was much such a storm in January, but not where I was in Polo, Ills. Thermometer down to 8 degrees this morning. 14. Snowed again all night. Excess begets excess. Have you too much? You shall have more. Snow about 3 feet on the level. The storm proves to have been general and all the Eastern and middle states are buried beneath 3 or 4 feet of snow. In Saratoga it is(March 13) reported to be 4 ft and 4 inches. In N.Y. city it was 2 feet yesterday, with drifts 8 or 10 ft high. Here in P. there are many tunnels from the side walks to the middle of the street. The spectacle of street and yards engulfed in snow is a very novel one. Some narrow streets are absolutely impassable for man or beast. March 17. Ten days ago Eugene Peck a presbyterian clergyman and an old friend of mine was killed by a locomotive in Washington. We camped together in Maine in 1880 with Uncle Nathan as our guide. I am haunted by the thought of the manner of his death. He was walking late in the afternoon on the track of the B. and O. for exercise. The engineer says that [crossed out: l] as he rounded a sharp curve he saw a man walking on the track ahead of him. He blew hiswhistle, which, instead of sending the man off the track caused him to stop and cover his ears with his hands to shut out the disagreeable sound. He did not even look around, and seemed all unconscious of his danger. As the engine struck him he uttered a piercing shriek which was heard all over the train. Probably this shriek was uttered in the brief moment between his discovery of his danger and the blow of the engine. He was a fine fellow -- a good angler and they say a good preacher, though I do not think he was a man of a devotional or strongly religious frame of mind. I cannot keep the vision of his standing there on that track with his hands to his ears, and the thundering express train rushing upon him. It has been claimed that there are moments when all of us are idiotic. Such a moment must have come upon Peck.22 Go to N.Y. to-day. Cross on the ice at P. Miss Dora Wheeler paints at my portrait and finishes it on Saturday the 24th. Do not quite like it, but it many be good. Stay at the Wheelers and am pleasantly entertained. At Gilders on Friday night meet Miss Edith Thomas and like her. A thin nervous girl with dark hair and dark eyes -- talks in a curious feminine base, the voice of country solitude. 26 Up to West Park; fire up and go to keeping bachelors hall. Sleet hail and rain. The most beastly March I ever remember to have seen; very cold most of the time, yet the Sparrows are in song.the fox, the Canada, the song; how sweet the chorus they make in the midst of this bleak snow covered landscape 28 A warm, foggy, still morning Thermometer 48 degrees. I sit in the summer house after the fog has lifted rest my chin on my hands, close my eyes and listen. The sweetest and most noticeable sound is the spring call of the nuthatch. How delightful it is. Crows caw in the distance, dogs bark over the river, a sparrow song here and there. Then the phoebe-bird, welcome to you dear phoebe; Your call is fraught with the memories of more than forty springs to me. A gang of men at work getting up the timbers for the roof on theice house. Now and then a honey bee comes out of the hive and circles languidly around. Over by the station I was a robin and heard the fox and Canada sparrows. The snow seems as slow to melt as sand. 31 Ice moving on the river. At work on my new purchase of land, blowing up the old apple trees with dynamite; a bright lovely day, great snowbanks here and there. April 1st Sunday. In P; go to church with Mrs Van Clef. Cloud and rain in afternoon, but real Spring in the air. 2d Julian and I come home to-day. My men at work ditching. I am full of business and quite happy. How the sparrows sing! Fox sparrows every where and very musical. We blow up more old apple trees. My! how the old trees do jump! 3d My 51st birthday. A bright lovely day, full of spring signs and sounds. The sparrows, robins, and bluebirds fairly scream with joy. I am joyful too, as happy probably as I ever shall be. Something to do! A bit of land to redeem and work up into a vineyard. The sparklingriver, the strong sunshine, the calling and singing birds, and my occupation on the side of the hill -- how alive it all is and how real! Mrs B. comes home to-day. My health good; feel more like work and take a keener interest in things than in many years. [crossed out: Hoping] Hope that in getting this strip of land I am getting a new hold of life. I was very much in need of a new zest or spur. I was in danger of stagnation. I am quite sure that [crossed out: I am] in draining and clearing up this hillside I am doing as much or more to my life.9 A day all glory; not a cloud, not a speck in the sky. A weather breeder of the angelic pattern. To-morrow we [crossed out: will] shall see the fury of which this will be the parent. How busy and happy I am. The fox sparrow and the purple finch, how they sang! George and I lay the tile in the main ditch. A sharp north wind. The peepers and clucking frogs are heard. 10 A cold driving rain from the south began about noon. What a contrast to yesterday.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1887 (June-October)
Text: 1887 June 24 - A right warm day after the heavy rains, day of swarming bees, of dark massive foliage, of high piled indolent summer clouds. Cherries ripe on the trees, raspberries reddening on the bushes, rye fields just turning, timmothy grass blooming, roses falling, pond-lilies opening their golden hearts to the sun 26. Sunday. Go home to-day Julian and I. Walk up the hill from the depot, and pick wild strawberries by the way, while in the meadows the bobolinks sing the songs of my boyhood...
Show more1887 June 24 - A right warm day after the heavy rains, day of swarming bees, of dark massive foliage, of high piled indolent summer clouds. Cherries ripe on the trees, raspberries reddening on the bushes, rye fields just turning, timmothy grass blooming, roses falling, pond-lilies opening their golden hearts to the sun 26. Sunday. Go home to-day Julian and I. Walk up the hill from the depot, and pick wild strawberries by the way, while in the meadows the bobolinks sing the songs of my boyhood. Have not heard these bobolinks before for many long years. Entirely a different song from the one I hear on the Hudson, and from the one I heard in the West last summer. Notes much longer and simpler and more resonant - more of the tintinabulation in it. The old home looks forlorn - all strangers but Hiram. But how sweet and good the country looks - looks its best. 27. Nearly all day on the hills picking wild strawberries, the same as in my youth, Bartram's upper fields. I can hardly spend the time to gaze my fill upon the landscape, but glance up from [crossed out: my leaves] the berries that woo me in the grass, and as it were sip the prospectslowly. It is 15 or 20 years since I picked berries in those fields. Stay at Hirams till Saturday the 2nd of July, when [crossed out: I] we go to Edens. How the bobolinks sang those days down there in the meadow - "the song of long ago." The only change a peculiar note in the middle of the song - never heard it before, - hear it in several songs in adjoining meadows. The bobolinks sing till after 8 o'clock in the long warm twilight. I sit up by the new Barn bars and listen to them and to the sparrows. 29 Go down to Uriah Bartrams and spend most of the day. Glad to see 'Riah again, our old and best neighbor. Remembered thatthe day he was married he went ny our house, and saw Hiram, a little boy playing in the road. He was born in CT and came here at the age of 2 with his parents; his father died when he was ten. His mother built the old house where I was born and lived in it two years, when she died. Out in the old garden there used to be a log house, where some one kept a school. He is 79, and keeps up the fight with great vigor yet. When I came he stood leaning on the swathe of his scythe, as I had seen him so often in my youth. Stay at Edens till the 7th when I go down home and on Saturday drive up my horse; reach Mt. Pleasant at 1 P.M. and stay all night at the Centre. Reach homeSunday at noon. Very heavy rains in Ulster Co, but none in Delaware. Come back to Eden's on Monday the 11th Wife comes on the 12th Aug 1st Been to Edens thus far. Spending the time trouting, loafing, reading, berrying, or wandering aimlessly about the fields and woods. Time passes pleasantly on the whole, though an occasional touch of ennui. Heavy rains the latter part of July, make a freshet in the streams; much needed. 2nd Powerful shower again this afternoon. Streams all full as in spring. A remarkably hot summer - never remember one like it. Since June 28, there has been hardly alet up in the heat. Five weeks of unbroken heat, 84 degrees or 85 degrees here in the shade. Never saw anything like it. August sights and sounds - The blooming clematis, the screaming, high sailing hawks, thunder heads like huge kernels of popped corn, the flying grass hoppers, the shrill note of the cicada, etc. In the dewy mornings, the webs of the spiders show in the new mown meadows like napkins laid out upon the grass. Thousands of napkins far and near. 3rd Still very hot. Eden and Willie cradling the oats. Powerful shower this P.M. 6. More rain in morning, clearing and cooler in afternoon. 7. Great change in weather. Seems as if the roof had been taken off and the heat allowed to escape. Bright and bracing. Eden, Julian and I go up to see Eva and John and Smith and Emma. Almost cold in the shade. 18 Came to Camden last night and spent this day with Walt Whitman. Reached his house before he was up in the morning. Was lying on his lounge when he came slowly down stairs. Find him pretty well - looking better than last year. With his light gray suit and white hair, and fresh florid face he made a fine picture. Among other things we talked of the Swinburne attack. Walt didnot show the least feeling on the subject, and I clearly saw was absolutely undisturbed by the article. I think he looks upon S. as I do, as a sort of abnormal creature, full of wind and gas, but not worth attending to. I abhor his poetry, and I know that Walt has no stomach for it. He is a mere puff of mephritic gas. I told Walt I had always been more disturbed by Swinburne's admiration for him than I was now disturbed by his condemnation. I was heartily glad that his true character had at last come out. By and by W. had his horse hitched up and we drove down to Glendale to see young Gilchrist, ten miles, a fine drive through a level farming and gardening country; warm but breezy. Walt drivesbriskly and salutes every person he meets, little and big, black and white, male and female. Nearly all return his salute cordially. He said he knew but few of the persons he spoke to but as he grew older the old Long Island custom of his people to speak to every one on the road was strong upon him. One drunken man in a buggy, responded, "Why Pop, how d'ye do, pop!" etc. We talked of many things. I recall this remark of W. that it was difficult to see what the feudal world would have come to without Christianity; it would have been the centrifugal force without the centripetal. Those haughty lords and chieftans needed [crossed out: a] the force [crossed out: to] of Christianity to check and curb them etc. Walt knew the history of many houses on the roadhere a crazy man lived with two colored men to look after him; there in that fine house among the trees an old maid who had spent a large fortune and her house and lands, and was now destitute, yet she was a woman of good sense etc. The cherry lipped young Englishman was well and brisk and apparently enjoying himself in what to me was a very flat and uninteresting country, and an uninteresting household. We drove back before dark. W. was apparently not fatigued by the drive. 19. Part of the day with Walt and Gilchrist, and then back to N.Y. and to Bay Shore with Johnson. 24 Back to Hobart again. Much rain. The ground as full of water as in Spring. Never saw such rains in Summer.This time the creeks do not run down in a day or two but keep full. The hills and mountains are at last literally full of water. Oh, if the streams could always be as full as this. 28. Cool but bright. Eden, Julian and I drive over to Jones Burroughs and spend a pleasant 3 hours with him [crossed out he] and his sisters. Jones is decidedly above the average farmer in character and native intelligence. The vesper sparrows which sang so sweetly at sundown all about us here in the fields, have all ceased to sing some weeks ago.7 The end of a busy happy week. What glorious days we have had. The bird songs and calls never sounded so sweetly and for many years my life has not worn so fresh and inviting a hue. All from a few acres of land and from giving free reign to the farmer blood of my forefathers in my veins. How this blood, forced so long into other channels, or made to lie dormant, has rejoiced again in its love of the soil and of improving the land. My fathers again live and act in me. First swallow to-day, two of them, either the cliff or white-bellied. Sept 10. Just finished "Katia" by Tolstoi. A simple pleasant little story, the moral don't try to repeat life, each stage of life has its happiness, and don't expect to be always young, or to be always madly in love with the man or woman you marry. The flower of love, like every other flower is bound to fall, and to be succeeded by something different, but equally good and desirable. Weather cool and pleasant. Still at Edens.13 After such an unprecedently wet July and August everybody said as did I, that we will have a dry fall, but so far Sept has been very wet. After so great heat, probably the most severe for 100 years, everybody said as did I, we would probably have an early frost, but thus far no frost. A lovely drive to-day over the hill into Roses Brook Valley and down to the river again. Such brilliant maples, or parts of maples here and there; the tops and outer branches of some trees a vivid flame color. The soft maples a rich wine color, not common yet; rare enoughto make the eye search for it, and linger upon it when found. So emerald the landscape! As tender and fresh a green as England. Wish I could write up my holiday here in this pastoral country and call it "Out to Grass." What is style but a characteristic mode of expression that has charm, that gives us pleasure? The page must have the stamp of a fresh original mind, and the stamp must give us pleasure. Most assuredly Emerson had the gift of style, as did Carlyle at his best; Motley has no style. The great mass of the editorial, sermon writing,review writing of any age, [crossed out: has] have no style, bear no impress of a fresh and original personality. Eloquent and forcible writing is not enough -it must be the eloquence and force of a particular type of mind. If a man has the gift of style, his work needs no signature; every reader knows it is his. 14 Started on my drive back home this day; nooned at Lexington Flat, and stopped for the night at Phoenicia. A hot day. 15 Reached home to-day by way of Olive, Rosendale, Dashvill, etc. A very rough road. Drove through Fongore where I began my career as a young manman 33 years ago, and where I had not been for 27 or 28 years. How strange and saddening it all was to me. Here I reach the first house in the district, that of Blind Bishop, the miller; house quite unchanged. Here he had 12 children, 11 boys and one girl. I can see him open and shut his sightless eyes now. A remarkable man, large and coarse in structure, but of true stuff. Long since dead, and his children scattered or dead also. I saw two of the boys a mile above, and knew them; perhaps they did not know me. Here old Dr McClelland lived. He and his wife and Luther and Gordon and another boy - killed at Gettysburg as wasone of the Bishop boys - all dead; the girl Mary, alone lives - in N.Y. How well I remember them all. The Dr was Irish, and was rather a crusty old fellow. I remember that he did not put the sugar in his tea, but bit off a piece from time to time from a lump (maple) that lay beside his plate. When he was done eating he would reach up to the timber ceiling over head and take from its place in a crack, his toothpick; when he had used it he would return it to its place. The house is now painted, and unoccupied, and looks much less inviting than it did in those days. Then I come to the Methodist Church in the edge of the woods, where I spoiled many a beautiful summer Sunday. Dominic Phinney preached, a bald-headed man with a very lugubrious delivery. Here I once went "forward" during a revival excitement, but I was too honest to deceive myself or others; the miraculous change I expected did not come. I did not repeat the experiment. Nearly opposite is the house where I made it my home for one term, and where I made love to one of the girls, she also a teacher of my age (17). She was too fond, and I sickened of her. Long has she been dead, and her sister and her father and mother. The poorest bread, the worst butter, and the most killing biscuit I ever ate I had [crossed out: sat] set before me in that house. What a cook that woman was! Short, fat and freckled. The little shop where he made and cobbled shoes, poor man, still stands. Here Jim Smith lived a dark, greasy-looking man who spoke through his nose with a pretty daughter, Tammy, who came to school to me (older than I) and who long ago went to the bad. She was ready enough to go then, I suspect, when I knew her. And yonder is the little red school-house itself. With what emotion I gaze upon it. Here I made my beginning in the world Here I spent my first days away from the paternal roof. Seems as if some beloved son of mine had taught that school so long ago. How green he was, how tender and bashful, how homesick! How my heart yearns toward him. How long the summer days were. From April 11th till Oct. These first children or children of my first school, the faces and ways of many of them are still vivid before me, Jane North, delicate and fine looking, about 12 years, (long dead) Mary McClelland, fat and chubby and a little saucy, Ella Terwilliger, large head and eyes, and small body, etc. Why do these scenes makeme so sad? Then father and mother were in their prime as I am now, and all went well on the farm. It was really the morning of life with me, now it is long past the meridian. Oh, the past! the past! Slowly I drive through the place finding this house smaller than I remember it, or that barn in a different place, or a new house or other building here or there. I saw no person but a boy of 11 or 12, the very image of a boy that came to my school, Alonzo Davis. Doubtless his son; the same pronounced blue eyes and short nose, and the same mischievous air and way. How the sight of him carried me back! Here Sands Beach lived who told me spook stories, there Bloom Shoot, who kept me up at night till 11 o'clock talking theology. Here a road turned off toward the creek under the hill where a poor family lived, where I occasionally passed a night. One night as I rolled over in bed, the bed-stead gave a lurch and came down with a crash to the floor, but I stuck to it till morning. Ah how well I slept those nights; how sweet and fresh existence tasted! I taught the school for $11 permonth and "boarded round." The next year in Aug. I returned there on a visit, and they had had such bad luck with teachers that they hired me again, giving me $20 per month. I taught from Sept. till March or April, but remember less about this second term, except that some big girls came to me, attracted more I found by me personally, than by desire to learn. Two of them had taught school. During this second term I became acquainted with the girl who later became my wife. Bad luck for her, and for me too. A woman of excellent stuff, soured or vitiated by a drop or two of something else, a character un-adjustable to the events of life, inflexible, revengeful, narrow. Intensely feminine - all the female traits exaggerated, except tenderness, yet the most tearful of women. But she weeps over no wrongs but her own. Sept 29 From the point of view of science or reason, the old theology is of a piece with Indian medicine, or the medicine of the 15th or 16th centuries "Folk-medicines." - takes as little cognizance of the laws of cause and effect. But persons who believe in the virtues of tigers claws, charred serpents skins, dried toads, frog-spawn, spiders, etc, were very often benefitted by faith alone; so believers in the "plan of salvation," are undoubtedly often saved from sin, by their religion. 29 Think I have never seen the asters and the golden rod so fine as this fall. The abundant rains have brought them to perfection. Never before noted how much the golden rod is like a golden snow caught upon the extended arms and twigs of the plant. Never before saw the bees so active at this season - they are evidently reaping a harvest from the fall flowers, especially golden rod. - [crossed out: But] The summer has been a very poor one for honey. Oct 1st Damp, misty, rainy, warm - the May weather of autumn. Spend the day in P. Bring home the new life of Emerson.- No mans argument is invulnerable; it is just as strong as he is and no stronger. A skilled man in dialectics like a skilled man with a sword, or lance is sure in time to be met by a man more skilled, or to be caught off his guard, and his argument overthrown. - Great men are not much more apt to be right in their opinions, than little men. What absurd beliefs and views of things truly great men have at times held! Their greatness is not so much in this as in their power their grasp, their capacity to master and absorb a multitude of things. Of course I mean opinions upon abstruse, or theological questions. In practical verifiable matters the great man is nearer the truth.Oct 6. Bright day, after nearly a week of fog and light rain. Am reading the New Life of Emerson. In his earliest letters and journal jottings one sees the leading ideas of Emerson's life cropping out; - not so much ideas as the foundation stones of his moral and intellectual nature. These ideas are the sufficiency of man to himself, or self-reliance; the indifference of time or place; the supremacy of the moral law; the fragmentary character of all great men (but Shakespeare) Out of these ideas his teachings grow as out of a fertile soil. Are not first class men always committed to a few leading thoughts? Is not this one sign of their greatness?The majority of talented and brilliant writers of an age, do not stand for anything in particular. The chief thing about them is their talent their literary gift. This is true of Whipple, Lowell, Higginson, Taylor, and many others in this country, and of an army of fine writers in England. But such men as Carlyle, Mill, Spencer, Coleridge, Arnold, and Emerson are the spokesmen of certain definite principles; they were born to utter certain truths Hence their superior earnestness and effectiveness. As a prose writer Lowell will leave no mark, no, nor Morley nor Harrison, nor Gosse, nor Stevens etc. They use well the weapons in the armory of letters but they add no new ones, no new principle blooms and fruits in them. What is new in all great modern teachers is not the bare idea for which they speak, but the embodiment of it in a new personality; the application of it on a new and enlarged scale. We were familiar with the idea in general terms, now we have it in particular and precise terms. We have the map drawn to a large scale and all the details put in. See how Arnold has enforced and illustrated the idea of the value of the Academy, or a central standard of taste in letters. See how Carlyle enforces the value of the hero, or strong man; see how Emerson reads the lesson of life anew with his doctrine of self-reliance etc. Aside from Arnold I do not see [crossed out: as] that there is a man of letters in England who [crossed out: has any special] stands for anything in particular. Nor is there one in this country, aside from Whitman. Is there one in France now that Hugo is gone? It may be objected that this bent, this marked preference for certain ideas, is incompatible with the disinterestedness of the true spirit of letters. The literary man must be hospitable to all ideas. True enough in a sense. But the men of which I speak [crossed out: did not merely elect the idea of which] are not merely the spokesmen of certain ideas to the exclusion of others, they are the illustrations of them. They unconsciously speak for them. A certain germ has developedand come to full fruition in them. They furnish new types in literature; they enlarge its sphere. In the modern world literature must be thoroughly serious and earnest to hold its own. It must have something to say. It is a diversion and an amusement no longer. It is [???] no longer. It must do its share of the worlds work. The man who does not stand for some definite thought or quality more freely than any man before him, has a poor chance to be long heeded. St Beuve had an admirable talent, but had he any moral lift? Did he in and of himself illustrate any new thing? Thou shalt be disinterested! Truly; but [crossed out: they current] thou shalt also be in earnest and speak with more than thy tongue. Did DeQuincey stand for anything in particular? Did he have any message? And I fear he is already being left behind. Tolstoi? Oct 8. A delicious day, such as we often have in October - a day like a beautiful dream or like a sumptuous and mellow poem. A blue-bird again this year with [crossed out: the] a note that suggests a thrush - probably the same bird of last year. No doubt the recent ancestor of the blue bird was a thrush.Oct 10. Encountered a large wolf spider in the path between the house and my study. He seemed to charge upon me and tried to climb up my leg. Black. 1 1/2 inch long. When I brought him to bay with my led pencil, he reared up and lept spitefully toward my hand, then presently [crossed out: ? a] sprang upon the pencil and sank his or her fangs into it. Two minute drips of liquid remained on the pencil where her fangs had penetrated it. The longest and most savage spider I ever saw. The wolf spider Lycopis fatefera.16. Bright and clear. Heavy frost last night and night before last also. Fields very green. The fall does not bring the relish for light and for nature that I hoped it would. Can it be that henceforth I am to have only skimmed milk? 21. More rain, pretty heavy. Where is the dry spell we have all been expecting and predicting? A perfect spendthrift has the luck of the weather been this season. Next summer we shall all parch for this extravagance.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: April 13, 1888 - March 4, 1889
Text: April 13 A day of great brightness and beauty, but sharp; froze hard last night. While waiting for the little boat plucked my first hepatica, a small handful of them down by the river. Dear, welcome flower. Very happy these days improving my new lot. Blessed is the man who has a lot to improve, or who has some real occupation. How trivial and flitting the new generation seems to one -- of no account. The people whom we find upon the stage when we come into the world -- the old established...
Show moreApril 13 A day of great brightness and beauty, but sharp; froze hard last night. While waiting for the little boat plucked my first hepatica, a small handful of them down by the river. Dear, welcome flower. Very happy these days improving my new lot. Blessed is the man who has a lot to improve, or who has some real occupation. How trivial and flitting the new generation seems to one -- of no account. The people whom we find upon the stage when we come into the world -- the old established people, they seem important, and like a partof the natural system of things. When they pass away what a void it leaves. Those who take their places, the new set, how inconsequential they seem . But they are for the most part the same class of[crossed out: people] persons, and will seem permanent and important to others as the old people did to us. So it goes. -- The Andover Review says that "in Christ God reconciled the world unto himself" How curious and absurd this jargon of the theologians does sound to an outsider. And jargon it is. Theology and the theological view of the universe is precisely thehe antipode of the natural or scientific view. There is no sense or reason in it. It comes down to us from the dark ages. It ruled the minds of men before science or the rationalistic view of things was born. Think of what trouble poor God took to reconcile [crossed out: him] the world to himself; what a curious and intricate scheme he concocted -- worthy a theologian He got himself born of a virgin, then grew to manhood, then became an itinerant preacher, then got himself crucified by the Romans and buried, then came to life again etc. etc. -- all to reconcile the world to himself, that is to appease his own anger20 April continues cool with very beautiful days now and then; no warmth yet. Last night I found the last remnant of snow bank on my grounds, no bigger than my hand. Very busy and happy on my new lot. Work hard all day, and sleep pretty well at night. The fox sparrows sing all about and cheer me. And the purple finch -- how finely he sings these days. The death of Matthew Arnold which came without warning the other day, has been constantly in my thoughts since. does it give a sad tinge to this April, or does April beautify and render more significanthis death? It does really seem to put a seal upon him as I think of him as I go about my work and hear the happy birds and see the grass springing. April can make even death beautiful. I look upon Arnold as the greatest critic of English literature, such steadiness, directness, sureness of aim, and elevation, we have not before seen. He had the best qualities of the French and he had something the French have not. He was not at all a miscellaneous man; he stood for certain definite things; he was like a through train always on time and only fetching up at important points. His poetry is wonderfully good, only for some reason it does not melt intoone and stick to his mind, as it ought to. As with all first-class men, his death leaves a vacancy that no one else can fill. April 27 The perfection of April days. Yesterday and today were and are ideal days. And a perfect day in April surpasses all others. Its sweetness, freshness, uncloyingness, and a sort of spirituality can be had at no other time. Still, brooding days, when every sound strikes musically upon the ear. The high-hole now his long loud call comes up from the fields on all sides. At night the full moon rises red and warm and the toad begins his long drawn and to me musical tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-rVery busy these days setting out currants. This morning the river is like a great mirror. This labor in the field gives me a keener relish for Nature. I get such glances from her, stolen glances. One may have too much leisure. But the laboring man does not get sated with Nature. He has not time. To him she is like a mistress who never fully indulges him. April 29. Sunday. Very hot, 85 degrees in the shade; hot and dry [crossed ou: all the] since Wednesday. Julian and I get our first arbutus to-day. Several of the little warblers here. Oriole came yesterday, but silent.May 1st Overcast -- light rain, cool. Go to P. to meet Mulford. He does not come. 6th A cool week with frost one or two nights; getting dry; no rain to speak of for several weeks. Very busy at the new lot. The summer birds are arriving fast. Wood thrush yesterday. A walk through the woods with Mr Buck and Mr Mason. Violets in bloom. The adders tongue unusually late this season. Often find it before arbutus. Maples late. These things vary much different seasons. Shad trees in bloom.22d A cool May so far, and very dry up to the 12th; then a fine rain. Apple trees in bloom for a week past, just beginning to drop their petals. The world very beautiful now, like fairy land. Still at work in the fields, and quite well and happy. One cannot keep his love for the land, the soil, without work. Work brings him close to it; he embraces it and loves it and strikes his roots into it. 24 Still cool with light rain. The apple bloom is beginning to strew the ground. My spring work about done; begin to feel as if I could lay off a little.On the whole it has been better for me than a trip to Europe. Every drop of sweat I let fall into these furrows came back to me in many ways. My sleep seems restored and my interest in things is much keener. -- One reason why this country is uninteresting to the cultivated foreigner, is that it is mainly the work or result of the modern industrial democratic spirit, while Europe [crossed out: is the] was mainly fashioned [crossed out: by the] during the age of poetry and romance, the age of chivalry, of lords and ladies, before the "average man" with his industries and rail roads and prose had come to the front.All the vest[crossed out: a]iges of that previous age are profoundly interesting to us, because we see [crossed out: it] them afar off; [crossed out: it] the age belongs to literature and poetry and art and romance. Man had not then lost the perception of and the desire for beauty. In this country the mass of the people are [crossed out: ???] entire strangers [crossed out: of] to the sentiment of beauty; they deform whatever they touch. Will it always be so? -- I believe mind to be just as insep[crossed out:e]arable from matter as Electricity is; it is not matter but a property or quality of matter. Electricity is not a thing; it is probably a mode of motion, of molecular motion.May 30 Go home to-day on morning train. Walk up form station with a burden of shad. Reach home at 11 1/2. Hiram and his men are seated on the stone steps waiting dinner. The old place looks green and fresh, apple trees just blooming. In afternoon walk over to Curtis's place to see Abigail. No one at home. Sit a long time on the door steps wrapped in thoughts of the past, and in gazing upon the familiar landscape about me. It is all sweet and good and I enjoy being alone at such a time and place. Walk up through the woods, the dog following me. He trees a woodchuck up a small smooth sapling.the chuck keeps his hold as long as he can, but presently his feet begin to slip; he can keep up the pressure no longer, and down he comes into the dogs jaws. -- 6:45 p.m Out on the hill in the woods on my way again over to see sister Abigail, the fresh green familiar scene about me, the hermit thrush singing in the mountain above me, the bobolink in the meadows, the air still and delicious; sky nearly overcast, robins warbling here and there, cattle lowing, orchards in bloom, fresh plowed land all about the distant landscape. Oh, that hermits flute, how it pleases me! 31. Warm and still. I walk up the road early in the morning to hear the bobolinks in the meadows, how they do sing, and very nearly song of my boyhood, only some slight variations. But the song up there towards the sky above the hill meadows is new; it is the song of the shore lark; presently my eye discerns the happy singer 2 or 3 hundred feet in the air flying round and round; when he utters his crude halting lisping song he flies in a peculiar manner, tail spread and very conspicuous, and wings slowly flapping. The song is only a faint copy of the sky larks. The bird sings 5 minutes after I [crossed out: see] discover him, then nears theEarth singing at intervals till within a hundred feet of the ground when he plunges straight down in true sky lark fashion. Then I go up on the top of the big side hill where the boys are plowing, dragging and sowing oats. Here I sit a long time and immensely enjoy the scene. Charley Grant is there and with his blind eyes sees the landscape in memory thirty years back. I tell him what is in this direction and what in that, and he seems to see it all again. Hiram sows the oats, and while waiting for the plow, sits in deep meditation on the wall. Then I go up to the Old Clump and spend [crossed out: a couple of] an hour on the top; three hermits are in song as I go up. The spring beauty in bloom on the summit. In the afternoon I go attended by a throng of memories, over to the stream below the school house and fish a little, and dream a good deal; take three fine trout, which are as well as three hundred, I walk over [crossed out: ???] about the site of the old school house and in the field where we used to play ball 40 years ago, and think of many things. I am tempted to go up to the spring where we used to get water, but I do not go. The spring is doubtless there, but where are the childish faces it used to mirror? Dead, many of them and scattered far and wide, the others.I return by Angie's house and sit [crossed out: and] an hour with her and John, then home again. June 1st A bright lovely day rather cool. At 9 a.m. I leave home and go down through Chase's fields and woods to the church yard. I sit a long time at the graves of my dead. It seemed for a day or two afterward that I had seen father and mother, so vividly did their images rise up before me. Two men at the stable across the way finally disturb [crossed out: me] and annoy me much. One was telling the other about his bakly horse, his voice was harsh as a grater and he keptthe air blue with oaths. I moved away and after a while came back again. Just such June days thousands of them they had seen, but not here they lie. I noted that [crossed out: Aunt] Aunt Olly died on the 2d of June 1839. The new made grave of H. K. Jr beside fahter's makes me remember that I had half hoped, half feared that my own place would be there. At 11 am I walk up to the village and pass the rest of the day with Smith and Emma. S. and I walk up the copper mine in the late afternoon. Then we try for trout, but get none. I stay all night and take early trainfor Homer Lynch's in the morning. Find Jane well; Homer in the lot dragging, not so well as when I last saw him; he is fast breaking, klled by overwork, or reckless work and exposure. In the afternoon we drive to Edens, Ursula with us. Edens folks well and at supper when we arrive. Margaret looks bad; she too is breaking. 3 Sunday. Cool and bright. Chant comes over with Hirams team and I go back with him, a fine drive over the mountains. Stay at Hiram's all night. 4 Leave home at 7. Hiram and I. H. walks down with me to the village, where I take the train for Olive.As I enter Father North's door I see him sitting in a chair looking old and feeble. It has been over a year and a half since I have seen him. He looks up an recognizes me, and is very glad to see me. He can hardly walk. I help him up and into the other room. We sit here several hours to-gether. He talks of the past and of the time he used to cradle and reap, and gets quite animated over it. Also of wrestling; back hold was his favorite hold. As I help him walk across the floor, he says, jocosely, that he is done dancing.June 20 Go down to West Point and with Denton and others make an excursion to tamarack swamps. A hot day. The great purple fringed orchids in bloom in the swamps, very fine. Am taken with a bad head ache; go home with E. P. Roe, who keeps me over night and treats me very kindly. 24 Very hot and dry. June has been a pretty dry month. Showers all around us to-day but only a sprinkle here. 28 An old fashioned rain from the N.E. and N. began in the morning slowly and has rained moderately till this midafternoon. Drew in the last of the hay yesterday. A good year for clover. Never saw more clover. A great dealof white clover, and being pretty dry, the bees have made clover honey. 30 A bright cool morning, June rounded and full. Curr[crossed out:e]ants nearly ready. This mornign the bees are busy in the chestnut trees gathering pollen. The trees by the road near Gordons, hum like a hive. A cuckoo calling a long time this morning in the old apple tree by the house; had a good view of him, the black billed species. In calling his manner and motions are much like a dove or pigeon in cooing. I have often noticed a certain resemblence to the pigeon in his eye and head, and now the resemblence is confirmed by his way of calling or cooing. He inflates his throat quite as much as the dove does and makes a visible effort to produce the notes. His tail moves at every note. The remote ancestor of the cuckoo is nocturnal in his habits, which the pigeon is not.July 7 Go with Mr Van Cleef up to Balsam Lake and spend three days; a very agreeable time. Cool and delightful. Eat and sleep at a great rate; take about 50 trout from the lake in all, nearly as many casts for each trout as it takes bullets to kill a man in war. On Sunday the 8th, go to top of Balsam mountain and get a glimpse of my native hills from the observatory there. Heard the hermit thrush; about the lake heard the veery, olive-backed and wood thrushes, the latter most common. On Sunday while fising on the lake saw some small objectswimming across the glassy surface. As I came near I saw it was a mouse, the meadow mouse. He dipped beneath the water as I came near, I saw it was a mouse, the meadow-mouse. He dipped beneath the water as I came near, but came to the surface again in a twinkling. His legs went so swift I could hardly see them. I put out my oar and he crawled up it. Then from the oar he came to my hand and cuddled up in it as if he was cold fixing his feet and cleaning himself and eyeing me keenly. After holding him awhile I put down in the boat where he remained nearly an hour, when he got disconcerted and boldly plunged over board and set out for shore again. The meadown mouse is quite at home in the water, only he cannot stay long beneath the surface. 12 Eventless days, mostly occupied in pulling weeds, hoeing and lounging about; full of sad thoughts about Walt Whitman, expect each day to hear of his death, and trying to taste the bitter cup in advacne so as to be used to it when it really comes. How life will seem to me with Whitman gone I cannot imagine. He is my larger, greater earlier self. No man alive seems quite so near to me in many ways. 14 A letter from Walt; he is better and my spirits revive. Weather very dry; no rain to speak of since early May.19 A fine pouring rain [crossed out: the] to-day, began at 4 in the morning; how delicious it was to hear it come down. Rained till nearly noon; then a smart shower at 6 p.m. Wet the ground pretty well. July so far very cool, especially the nights 24 Digging our potatoes for market, price high (3.75 dollars) but yield poor, owing to dry weather. May get back the expense and a little more, in which case the fun of the thing will not have cost me anything. All my hoeing, watering, killing of bugs, on Sunday and nights, will not costme a cent Nights still very cool, getting very dry again. In the potato patch a big spider with a young toad, body of toad about one inch long, spider has fangs planted in the back of the toads neck, toad soon succumbs, spider easily drags him along; when the toad is dead he leaves him and retreats into the shade under a weed. Toad soon turns dark color. Did the spider suck his blood? He did not come back and claim his prey. When Johnny was cultivating the grapes, one of the native mice starts up with her young clinging to her teats and scampers away. 25 Whitman still improving, so says a card from Phila. A great load is lifted from my spirits. -- Think of the myriads of peoples that fill the past, the great ocean. There in that sea of faces I see father and mother; how precious they look to me. Oh if they could only draw near and speak! -- The little mouse I saw swimming in Balsam Lake did not get as wet as a domestic animal would have [crossed out: done]. It was quite dry save on its legs and belly. Its fur shed water like a duck's feathers. 26 the July days go by and bring me little pleasure or interest. I pull weeds by spurts, read a little, and look after the farm work. I crave and need above all some one to talk to, some comrade, and quite a different home life from what I have, not the least companionship seems possible between me and wife, and Julian is still too young to meet the requirement. Aug 1st A warm day after the rain of last night, a stingy rain, considering our needs. A great downpour in P. and in R. but only about 1/2 inch here. All summer the showers have [crossed out: went] gone round us, as theydo nearly every summer. We get the skirts of the showers that go south and north, but seldom does a shower strike us fairly. Digging potatoes to-day, and pulling weeds, and long sitting i the summer house with book or magazine. But little relish for reading and none for literary work. 2d A cool, still smoky day, a real August day with a hint of fall. 3 I miss the indigo bird this summer; have hardly heard one; usually [crossed out: their] his not is very noticeable the long August days. I hope no ill has befallen him.4 A smart thunder shower after a very hot forenoon. It came black and portentious out of the north west, a very carnival of thunder and lightning. Have not heard such rapid explosives for many a day. Certainly no before this season. An inch of water fell in a brief time. -- How completely the world was once dominated by theological ideas, but how surely these ideas and ideals are passing away, and the world is coming under the sway of an entirely different class of ideas -- the ideas begotten by physical science and naturalism.The Evangelical churches [crossed out: ???] are slowly but surely giving up their theology, outgrowing it, getting ashamed of it. It is [crossed out: ???] moribund. [crossed out: and] They are trimming their sails to catch the new forces. Only the old mother Church, the Catholic, still abates not her superstitions. She has faced and weathered many a storm and she thinks she can weather this one, but she cannot. This is the flood, the deluge, and she must either float or be buried beneath the waves, or to vary the figure, it is not merely a change in the weather; it is a change like the going off the ice ageAug 5. While walking amid my new vineyard and lamenting the damage done by the rain, my attention was attracted by a [crossed out: bi] strange bird note high in the air. Presently I discovered the bird circling around as if undecided which way to go. It seemed lost. After a moment I know it to be an English sky lark. Its size, flight, and strong, harsh call note, were those of the lark. It finally went northward. We have not bird that looks just as that did as it flew swiftly across the sky.6 Wet and drizzly; no work today. Read Stedman a little, but soon tire. There is something fine and choice about his prose, and yet it does not ventilate the mind like that of the great writers. On the contrary the air is rather close and the view narrow. But such a poem as his on John Brown really makes a breeze in the mind. 12 Rain, rain, and cool. 15 Dr Burroughs and family came to-day. Immensely tickled to see him, a man to love and follow.16 A trip to the falls in the woods. Spend a couple of hours with the Doctor Julian and Johnny. Weather very hot and muggy. 17 Lawyer Proctor of Brooklyn calls and spends the day. Has some new things to tell me. He says some birds Earth them selves and some wash, and a few do both. The English sparrow does both, says that the mass of jelly like spawn in the pools in spring is by the liz[crossed out:z]ard; that it swells up after being deposited. Says the young of the box turtle keep under the ground till they are a few years old; are dirt color. A young farmer in N.J. told him this, which hehas found correct. That is why we never see any small ones of this species. He has switched a garden snake when a boy and seen the young come out of her mouth, and then run in again. He saw a cross between a monkey and a cat, and a cat and a rabbit. He is very prolix, but has real knowledge. He is a bachelor and says he has never known woman. 19 A delicious August day. We go to church in morning, and take a row on the river in the afternoon, a sweet day. 20 The good doctor and family leave to-day. Of all my relatives he it is whom I love most.23d A clear, bright, vig[crossed out:e]orous morning with a decided feeling of fall; must have come near a frost last night back in the hills. Sleep nearly perfect these days, and general healthy very good. From 24th to 27th at Onteora Park in the Catskills, a pleasant restful time. Sept 1st Alone in this house once more. Mrs. B. and Julian at Hobard since Thursday. A heavy rain last night and this morning. Warm, with breaking sky now. -- There seems to be some spirit or presence in the soil to whichvegetation acts as a sort of draft draught, just as the chimney is draught to the air in the room. This spirit or force finds an outlet and expression in vegetation. Hence when a tree or plant or vine gets established, how difficult it is to make anything grow beneath it. The current of growth seem to be all going out through the established vine. It is not merely a question of moisture and fertility, but the soil is preoccupied; its attention is all diverted into the old channel. Hence seeds lay dormant in the ground for years, with plenty of moisture and fertility about them, and only the vital force of the soil wanting. This finds an outlet through the other growths, check these andthe seeds germinate and spring up at once, like soldiers, to take the place of their slain comrades. 7 Very cold; a frost in some places back of the hill last night. Busy these days shipping grapes. 8 A heavy rain and warm. Go to P. to-day. -- The new book or essay must either add to our knowledge, or else it must tell us what we already know in such a way as to make us enjoy it afresh. If it is neither new in matter, nor fresh in treatment we do not want it. Can my books stand this test? I believe they can. 19. Start for Camden to-day. Spend a few hours in N.Y. and then to Camden about 4 p.m. Walt is lying on his bed when I enter his room. He looks and speaks as usual. I stand by his bed side a few moments, his hand in mine, and then help him up and to his chair, where he sits amid a chaos of books letters and papers, as usual. He talks and looks almost the same as usual. Is alert and curious when I speak. I note his hearing is poorer than when we met a year ago. I stay an hour with him, and then, for fear of tiring him, go over to Phila. to see Gilchrist. Come back at night and find Walt bright and ready to talk as ever. But we soon tire him, and so leave.20. This was one of Walts poor days and I do not see him, tho' I call twice. Go to the grave of Franklin, and gaze at it long through the iron fence from the side walk. How much it calls up and suggests. Visit the old State House and indepencence Hall also for the first time. In the evening see Walt for a moment to say good bye. He is partly undressed and ready for bed. He presses my hand long and tenderly, we kiss and part, probably for the last time. I think he has in his own mind given up the fight, and awaits the end.21 To Brille on the Jersey coast three days with the Johnsons. Beautiful country, like England, and the sea roaring away there in the distance. Weather cool and fair. 24 Back home to-day and find that Mrs. B. and Julian came back the day I left. Oct 6. Weather cool and wet; an unusually wet fall and cold, more rain I think, than even last fall. Health good these days, and my interest in the place, in grapes, and my vineyards etc. keener than ever.10 The first glorious October day, full of light and beauty. Spent it on the housetop mending my chimney. How my eye did rove from the work in hand. 14 Still cold and wet; rain, rain, and yet no severe frosts. Too much cloud for frosts, but when shall we have our beautiful autumn days? 15 A glorious day, too bright. 16 Rain, rain. -- After all would one not rather be a poet who could not be narrowed into a Cause, so large and sure and easy that no one could dispute him, tho' they might be indifferent to him. To excel on the common ground and with the accepted means and tools -- that is the best -- "The Whitman Cause" sounds provincial. 18. Fine day, full of color. 19. Rain, rain, rain. 20. Fine morning, clearing after the rain and quite warm 21. Clear and windy, and cold. 22. Mild, partly over cast. 23. Cloud and mist and light rain. 24. Rain in the morning, clearing at noon. 25 A lovely day, still warm, and brilliant, too fine to last. moving stone wall, and plowing etc. 26 Fair day of cloud and sunshine. 27 Rain and mist and fog. 28 Fog and mist and little rain, the ground covered with just fallen leaves. Signs of a cold wave.The gusts of wind bring down the leaves in great flocks. They look like the alighting of immense flocks of little and big golden birds. Maples will soon be stripped, some of them are so already. 29 Clearing weather 30 Bright and fair. 31 Fine day. go to P. in quest of a house for wife. Nov. 1 A lovely day at last; a perfect Indian Summer day. Thermometer above 60 for the first time in many weeks. 2 Still fine. Myron Benton comes at 4 1/2 P.M. Suddenly the world and life looks different to me, so glad am I to see him. For a moment the atmosphere of long gone days is over things again and the old joy in life comes back. 3d Cloud and light rain, clearing cool and delightful in afternoon. We go to P. 4 A perfect Nov. day, bright, cool still, no cloud, no wind, charming. 5 Fine day. 6 Warm, cloudy, threatening rain in fore noon, clearing in afternoon. Election day. Vote again for Cleveland; long since sick of high tariff. 7 Fine day. Election news bad. 8 Cloudy; slow rain in afternoon. 9 Warm, with slow rain in forenoon. 10 Mist, fog and rain. I notice that the wild carrots blooming this fall are quite pink; shows how a cool mild climate gives more color to the flowers as in England12. Go home to-day to see about Hiram's affair; an overcast Nov. day; drink again at the old fountain of youth; look again upon the dear familiar scenes. Walk over to Curtis's old house and down to J. S. Carroll's in afternoon. 13 Down to Olive this morning to see father North, doubtless for the last time. The old man on his back in bed; tells me he is almost gone. But he gets up in afternoon and sits in his chair, jokes a little and looks at times quite like himslef, and his mind seems unchanged, except a weaker memory. Slowly his sun is setting, and in a few months at most must vanish in darkness. A bright lovely day. the soft grindstone cuts the steel faster than the hard. It gives itself away more liberally. Nov 25 Sunday. The past week cold, clear and hard. Tuesday night the mercury fell to 18 degrees. Wednesday was clear and cold, Thursday the same, Thursday night another cold wave which sent the mercury down to 10 and froze over all the ponds, and made skating. Friday clear and cold and dry. Saturday, still, overcast. To-day a fierce wind from the north, almost a gale with snow which set in about noon. The flakes drive horizontally throughthe air. If this is but the introduction to winter, what prospect before us. If these days are the foothills, what are the mountains to be? How chilling the river looks through the veil of snow, lashed and foaming down there. The past week and part of the week before, at work in the old house, George R. and I. Have it now nearly ready for the masons. Dec. 2d Bright and lovely. I sit a long time on the old elm tree out by the spring and gaze upon my new land and plan and speculate about the future of my vineyard. In afternoon Julian and I go over to Sterlings and walk with Henry overhis land, advising him about planting vineyards etc. Coming back old Mr Sterling walks ith us and shows us the old road through the woods. the old Scotchman, I felt tender toward him, Scott and Burns and Carllyle walked beside me in him. 9 Much dark damp cloudy weather the past week, but no severe cold, and no snow. Plastered the old house. 10 A melting snow all day; an inch or two remaining on the ground. 14 Ground bare and hardly frozen, mercury down to 16 degrees this morning. A cold wave upon us. 15 Bright, clear, sharp, exhilarating move some trees.-- The best prose, the best criticism of whatever sort, is always creative like the best poetry. A page may be eloquent and brilliant and not be creative, I think Lowells prose is seldom creative. Matthew Arnold's is much more generally so. Arnold often quickens and satisfies one's deepest sesne. Goethe's criticism was often creative, so was St Beuves. Mr. Stedmans? I doubt it. Emersons prose at its best is creative. This is the test or proof that it is good prose. It feeds and stimulates the spirit. Creative prose gives me a sense of life and reality like that of nature. Ones mind is brought in contact with someting [crossed out: real and wo] palpable and warm. Mr Birrell comes nearthe creative touch at times, but I am not certain that he really has it. Indeed, I am not certain that any British critic, now that Arnold is gone, has it. I note it at times in Amiel's journal. The writer of creative prose always in producing it, experiences a kind of intellectual orgasm, as does the reader, if he be capable of it, in reading it. Vital prose is but another name for creative force. -- How many of the notions of mankinds are like the common one that the sun puts out the fire. The sun does put out the fire to the eye, but not to the pot above it. Its [crossed out: own] greater light eclipses the lesser light of the fire,but in no way does it check it. 17 Heavy rain of 36 hours or more. Ground chock full of water and frost all out. One of my tile drains unable to carry off the water. Last night Julian finished his school composition, and sat in his chair by the stove and read it to me. It is about "Papas Dogs", he has been at work on it many days. It is quite a production. 19 Bright sharp days, floating ice in the river; no snow to be seen. 21. Bright and pleasant. Go up to the school in afternoon to hear the speaking, compositions, etc. Julian is very anxious I should be on hand to hear him. He is quite embarassed when his turncomes, but he does well, decidedly the best of all of them. He speaks two pieces and reads his essay. His essay made them laugh. It was the second one he has written. His other described his tramp from Highland home two winters ago. It also made them laugh, he said. I am glad to see his mind take this turn. He does not look far off for a theme, like the other boys, but writes about something near at hand, that he actually knows about. His essay was in my own vein, and vastly more promising than anything I ever did at that age. It was areal piece of writing about my dogs. How curious it was to me to see him stand up there and read an original essay!22. Clear and cold, mercury below 10 degrees. Ice on the river stationary this morning (11 am). The bare naked earth aches with cold. 23 Bright and milder. 24 Lovely day without a cloud, looks like Indian Summer. Drive to P; roads dry and dusty. Thermometer about 40 degrees. 25 The mildest, finest Xmas I have seen in many, many years, soft and mild as October. Bees out of the hives. Thermometer 50 degrees on north side of the house. Feel well and enjoy standing about in the genial warmth and looking out into the soft hazy day, and upon the brown earth. 26 Still warm and pleasant. Bluebirds call in the air.27 A warm rain out of the sout hwest threatens to be severe. Reading "Tom Brown" to Julian these nights, and get very much excited over it myself. J. seems to think much about Martin, the "madman" as the boys called him. Dec 30. Day of great calm and beauty. A perfect winter Indian summer day. Here and there a floating mass ofice in the river like a stray cloud in a summer sky. 31. A mild cloudy day, a sprinkle of rain in morning. Drive to P. plenty of mud.1889 January 1st A bright warm lovely day, [crossed out: the] a copy of Xmas, no frost in the ground, no wind. Thermometer about 40 degrees. 2d Last night came Willie. Glad to see him, Eden's only child, about 23 years of age. To-day cloudy and mild, sun almost got through several times. 3d The mild gentle weather continues. Hardly a cloud to-day. Thermometer about [crossed out: 50] 44 degrees. At no time during the fall did we have ten days of as fine weather as the past ten have been. This weather was due us long ago but got delayed somewhere. Outlook for ice on the river very poor.1889 January 4 Still clear and mild. A strange winter calm. Is nature holding her breath, which will come by and by with de-doubled force? 5. Mild, overcast, with rain from the north at night. 6 Cooler, cloudy, with some rain. An eagle sat this morning a long time on the top of a tree down by the river. He looked as big as a turkey -- I notice that in the shallower water along shore the time turns much quicker than out in the deeper channel. 9 The 5th anniversary of father's death; Sat in my study and wrote. Warm rain from 11 to 4.10 Heavy rain again yesterday. Thermometer 50. Down to 40 to-day with high wind No frost in the ground, no ice on the river; river as free from ice as in May. The rye grows perceptibly. Mrs. B. and Julian start for Poughkeepsie to-day to board, the rest of the winter. It is my plan that we keep house here no more. I am to stay here a week or so and try again to write something. 15 A day of sun and calm, a kind of heroic Indian summeer, mercury down to 17 degrees this morning. No snow, not a speck of ice on the river. The little steamer Black resumes her trips to-day I [crossed out: ???] sit in my study by the open fire and look over some essays with a view to printing a new vol. "Indoor Studies". In afternoon I burn brush and help about hauling stone. A great calm over all Nature; not a cloud in the sky. Much worried about my dog, "I-know" who disappeared very mysteriously Monday morning during my absense in P. 16 Another lovely mild, Indian summer day. Thermometer 40 degrees. "I-know" turns up at Dr Gills where there are two sluts in heat. I thought surely he would come home with me, but no, he is crazy, like a man desperately in love, there is not spot on earth like that one. 17 A warm rain from the S.W. last night and this morning. Sudden heavy spurts this forenoon. Bees out of the hive. Clear at night with a full moon. 18 Day like a dream; the river a mirror, the sky a benediction. Florida days almost. Bees lively about the hives. Few birds this wintter so far, only a lot of gold-finches about, a few snow-birds, chickadees, and nuthatches and now and then a troop of blue birds. No ice in the river for ten days or more. First considerable snow about the 20th -- 8 inches, which drives me to Po'keepsie. Spend the rest of the month and all of Feb. in P. writing most of each forenoon; write another essay on Science and Theology, and a paper on Lovers of Nature, and some miscellaneous stuff, mostly of a theological cast. Feel pretty well, but one bad head ache and one attack of winter cholera. Mrs B. in one of [crossed out: hr] her tantrums the last of Feb. Weather a moderate uniform winter temperature, but little snow and no severe cold; thermometer down to 3 below once or twice. River closed up about the 1st of Feb. ice 6 inches thick. March 1st A bright lovely day, a good sap day; really feelslike Spring. Snow nearly gone. Walk over on the ice to Highland and back. Still life does not look very inviting to me. 3. Warm and spring like, rain in forenoon, only little patches of snow and ice left. 4 News this morning from Scotland that my friend Robert Scoular is dead. Made his aquaintance at Alloway in 1882. He visited me here in summer of 1886. A most hearty enjoyable Scotchman, a boy in enthusiasm and in his delight in life. While in this country everything he saw delighted him. Full of blood and spirits and health. I thought he would live to be 80. Some sudden stoppage of his breath by pressure on the bronchial tubes, probably from fat. What a delightful Sunday we once spent together on the "banks and braes of bonnie Doon", lying on the grass and strolling through the groves, listening to the birds!
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: July 1, 1889 - July 1, 1890
Text: July 1 Warm, muggy and overcast. Work till 11 a.m tying up grape vines, then go to P. to see wife. Light dahses of rain. 2d Overcast, with light rain, enough in afternoon to stop work. Julian leaves me to-day to go to Hobart with Mrs. B. I hate to se him go. I shall be very lonely. He is all I have. He often tires me with his endless questions, but I find much companionship in him.4 Damp and cloudy till noon when a heavy shower falls; tie up grapes most of the day. Distressingly damp and...
Show moreJuly 1 Warm, muggy and overcast. Work till 11 a.m tying up grape vines, then go to P. to see wife. Light dahses of rain. 2d Overcast, with light rain, enough in afternoon to stop work. Julian leaves me to-day to go to Hobart with Mrs. B. I hate to se him go. I shall be very lonely. He is all I have. He often tires me with his endless questions, but I find much companionship in him.4 Damp and cloudy till noon when a heavy shower falls; tie up grapes most of the day. Distressingly damp and mildewy weather. Never remember the like of it so long continued. Four rainy days, this week, but not heavy till to-day. Must write an essay and call it "Look nearer Home" that is for the explanation of most or all strange or common things in matters near at hand. The question has a theological bearing. 9 Very hot for past few days; busy tying up the vines; heavy shower at 5 1/2 P.M., a regular down pour again. This willpass for the season of the great rains. The air seems burdened with humidity all the time. 10. More rain this morning. A day of cloud and damp, wind in the South 12 Go out to Hobart this afternoon Walk up to Edens from Depot. How clean fresh and sweet the country seems, the air full of the breath of meadows. How still the mountains, how serene in the light of the setting sun. Julian meets me up the road, with big trout stories on his tongue. He is well and happy, and has several fine trout for my breakfast -- and his. I stay to Edens till 23d. Go fishing with Julian about everyother day, and have pretty good luck. Take several 1/2 pound trout, and more 1/4 pound. One day J. takes one 11 inches long. I look on and enjoy his excitement. We fish at the mouth of the big spring run, wading out to our knees. Work a little in hay, read Amiel's Journal, and once go up on the mountain for raspberries. A quiet, restufl time, gain 6 pounds in 10 days. Go over to the old home one day and night, but am oppressed by the past and by Hirams poor management. To Homer Lynchs on the 23d and then home. Homer is breaking up. Killed by hard work and misuse of himself. Pals[crossed out:e]y is upon him. July 27 Indications of coming rain yesterday afternoon, but when the sun set [crossed out: the] a sudden flush came upon all the could, reaching the eastern horizon, and I said the storm had flashed in the pan, but this morning, lo the rain. It began before 7, and it has not cleared before eleven. Signs of an all day rain, slow and deliberate, from the N.E. 30 The hell of rain continues. A heavy shower yesterday at 5 P.M. and a down pour this morning that set the whole ground afloat. Wahsed my new vineyards badly, almost a cloud-burst.No wind here, but probably a cyclone back of the hills somewhere, as, in the midst of the rain shingle and leaves and small branches of trees and vines fell swiftly down from the clouds. It was a curious sight. How long oh Devil is this to last! 31 Rain continues, and the more it rains, the murkier and nastier the sky looks. This morning the air is reeking with vapor. Deluges yesterday all over the country. The very sky seems rotten. Said to be the result of a huge air wave from the Atlantic which has drifted in upon the Coast.Aug 3. Still the rain comes down Three tremendous showers this week and innumerable lesser ones. The Earth oozes water at every pore. Never saw my land so oveflowing. Seven days fo rain. Still the air is not relieved It is reeking with moisture and the sky is think and nasty. Flood and devastation throughout the country. This season will be as memorable as that of the great snow storm in March 1888. P.M. Showers all around us this P.M. and one now 5 o'clock, approaching from the west. A brisk shower at noon -- a terrible down pour at 5 1/2 for 15 minutes. Set all the land afloat again.4 Sunday. A fine day at last. Cool with wind in NW., but sky too milky yet. Drive down to Highland. Grape crops in that section and in every other, nearly all gone, the black and the red rot. 5. Rain again, takes up the tale where it dropped it last week; air think and murky, no motion, no wind, with a steady heavy (at times) rain from S.W. The destruction of all farm crops is imminent. If this is not hell, what is it? 11. Bright and cool, 3 fair days last week. The threatened rain of Friday and Saturday did not amount to much. Looks now as if the tide had turned and fair dry weather [crossed out: was] is at hand.Am alone in the old house. Wife and Julain at Stamford. But even this is better than housekeeping after the old style. I have peace at last, and am fairly happy. 14 Again the damnable rains are upon us. After nearly a weeks respite, and after we had all predicted fair and dry weather at hand, the rain began last night with such thunder, and is still (at 9 a.m.) pouring. I am nearly ready to believe in a malignant Providence at any rate. Looks like a deliberate purpose on the part of the weather gods to destory all the crops of the country. 15 An inch of rain yesterday. Mist and cloud till this afternoon.16 A lovely day, clear and cool. Champion grapes ripe. The girdled fruit shipped one week ago by Van B. 24 Dry dreamy August days at last. No rain for ten days. Warm and tranquil. The time of excursions at hand. Nearly every day boatloads of happy peoples go by with music and laughter. I work part of the time and sit and dream or read in my summer house the rest. Pick a few peaches each day Mrs. B. and Julian up at Stamford yet. Pretty lonely times, but not unhappy: better than housekeeping on the old terms. Van cutting weeds, Lute plowing in the grapes.25 A bright, cool day, spent it on the hills and in the woods of Dutchess Co. How delightful that long reclining upon the top of that pastoral hill in sight of the mountains! The slowly sinking sun, the bleating sheep. The marsh hawk prowling up and down low over the grass and now and then dropping down in it, then the sun setting in a notch in the S. Catskills, then the glow as of embers where he went down and then the rest of the idyl. 27 Clear, cool, dreamy August days, the air full of the chirping of crickets, boats drifting idly about the river, their sails white in the sun. I read and think or muse, read "Emerson in Concord"Sept 1st Clear, hot day. Spent the day in Olive with wife and Julian at father Norths. The old man very low; the spark of life only flickers. Hardly knew me, yet seemed to have a vague idea of me; spoke my name, and asked for me. Hawthorne said it required a continued freshness of mind to write his sketches, and he could not keep up to the mark more than one third of his time. It requries the same continued freshness of mind to write my out-door papers, and I fear it has gone from me forever. I cannot get up that keen fresh interest in things any more, I fear. 16 The funeral day of father North. The old man yields at last, died Saturday night a 1 A.M; buried to-day at about 3 1/2 P.M. at Shokan. I go up in the morning on first train. A brisk shower just as we reach the burying ground. I alone of all his friends get out of the wagon and go and stand by his open grave and throw in my handfull of dirt. He was 88 last April. A man of great activity and industry: not a lazy hair in his head, also a man of good will and fair dealing, much esteemed by all who knew him. What a picture his life would be if it could be written. I shall think of him a great deal as long as I live. Now there is no one living whom I can call "father". 21. Go down to Asbury Park to-day, all of us. Reach there at 2 1/2 P.M. Stop at the Bristol. The old ocean once more. Spend one week there. Eat and sleep like a boy. Gain a pound in weight Each day. Julian and I spend most of the time upon the beach. 28. This morning I am up early and off to Camden to see Walt; reach his house at 9 1/2. Find him eating his breakfast of toast and [crossed out: cof] tea and looking remarkably well, much better than one year ago.He stands a fair chance of outliving us all yet. Sit 3 hours with him and have much talk. He sits amid a perfect chaos of books, papers, letters, and MS and dust never saw anything like it. So serene and clean and calm, and such wild confusion in the room about him. Even the window papers were partly torn from their places and hung down as if to heighten the effect, if such were was possible. I expect to see him again in the afternoon, but my head ache comes round and I leave for N.Y. and at 6 P.M. take boat for P. 29 Reach home to-day. A lovely day and good to be here. While passing down the Jersey coast that morning the train seemed to have disturbed vastswarms of swallows (the sand martin I judged) the air was black with them for a mile or more; they were as thick as bees in swarming; there must have been a million of them. Did they pass the night in the sand dunes there, or why were they in that particular spot? -- Julain suggested a plan by which the world might be made to start anew again, or Creation made to repeat itself. He says pe[crossed out:a]el off the outer crust of the earth as you would the bark of a tree, till you come to the quick, the fluid and molten interior, and then life will begin again and may be surpass the present. "What shall we do with the crust" I asked, "Throw itoff into space" he said. "Let's begin to strip the old hickory nut to-morrow" I replied. 4 A mild soft, beautiful October day after the frost of two night ago. Julian and I again in the old house. J. goes to school. In the evening we sit by an open woods fire in the old fire place, and a real feeling of home comes upon me. I do the house work, as I have nearly all the time since spring. Mrs. B. in P. When Mr Brookman asked the old Irishman what he could do for him, he replied, pointing up, "Spake a good word for me to the man up above." The old fellow like the majority of makind concieves of God as a man -- a bigger manthan any on Earth, but still a man. Of course when we think of God as being, we cannot think of him under any other image than that of a man. 13. A pouring rain all night from the north. The drains all running agian, and a lake of water in the old cellar. Overcast and cold to-day. 14 A dark, cold windy day 15. Very windy. Partly clear. Drive to P. with stove for Mrs. B. 16 A day of great brightness and beauty the air cleaned and burnished by two days and nights of terrific wind form the north. How the maples glow in the sunlight! Much pleasure in loitering about the place such days -- sad pleasure.26. Ten days without rain and rather fine weather, two or three heavy frosts. The Armours left yesterday and again the house is dead. To-day I take a load of things to P. to set up housekeeping in some rooms. Do not like the outlook much. 27. Rain and rain. Julian and I alone in the old house. J. reading The Three Guardsmen of Dumas. I skim through Brigg's "Whittier". Not worth the candle. The more the old theology is stirred up the more it stinks. What is the use of pointing out the difference between one rotten potato and another? Pitch them both into the rubbish heap. In reading these things I often have to stop and examine myself to see if I reallyawake. It is incredible that man can really discuss theses questions, the question of infant damnation for instance. But they do and tell you all about the plans and purposes of the monstrosity they call God. It is sickening. I suppose the ancient races had no belief in the modern sense; they had fear veneration, worship, [crossed out: superstition] They saw things with the eye of imagination, not with they eye of reason. Nov 3. Sunday. A week of cloud and rain, not a gleam of sunshine for 8 or 9 days. Went to Roxbury last Monday to look after Hirams matters. Spent two days in the village; very wretched; did not go up to the old place; too painful.Much depressed because Smith and Emma are going to Connecticut. Hirams outlook very black. He must give up the old place. I shall probably lose heavily by him. Well, I did what I thought was my duty. I wanted to see him keep the old home. But clearly he is not competent to manage the farm. The end is at hand. It will be almost like losing father and mother over again to see the old home go into strange hands, but I fear I am powerless to avert it. 6 A bright, quiet lovely afternoon. Am living these days in the old house. Mrs. B. and Julian in P. Not much pleasure, evenings lonely. Read and muse, but not thoughts.at work today setitng posts in vineyard. 25. A mild but very wet Nov. so far. Last week it rained five days, a bad flood in some parts of the country, but not heavy rain in these parts. Only one considerable freeze this month. No snow yet. Spend part of the time in P. with Wife and Julian, but begin to see that I cannot stand it there; the same old story. Mrs. B. out of humor and worked to death as usual. I will live alone with my dog and cat. I suspect my housekeeping with that woman is about done. I simply cannot stand her temper and her want of intelligent interest in any worthy thing under the sun.I arrived down from the old house last week, and am again alone in the big house; but better this solitude than the horrible neatness and the sour looks and words [crossed out: of] on Cannon St. I doubt if my father ever stayed alone a single night in his house Probably none of my family, unless it be Abigail, have passed so much time alone in a house. Am reading Carlyles letters (from 1814-1816), wonderful letters, a wonderful man, so mature, so firm and sure upon his feet from the first! Hardly any of his opinions or criticisms during his 20s did he ever need to revise.26 A bright mild day. Spent the afternoon up by the creek screening gravel. I had real enjoyment, almost happiness. The bright sun, the full bounding stream hastening along within a few feet of me, the trees and rocks, the mild secluded place, my dog, "I-know" capering about, the brisk exercise etc. etc. -- it all went to the right spot. It dispelled my gloom and almost made me cheery. The walk home too near sundown, how it called up my many many walks along this road in happier days. I came back to a deserted house, but have eaten my supper [crossed out: in] with comparative satisfaction.26 What emphasis Carlyle lays upon work in his letters. How he nerves himself to it; how he exhorts and encourages himself and his bretheren. work, work, work is the only salvation he cries, the only road to happiness, in fact the only way to keep form going mad [crossed out: i]on this Earth. Some days he wrote 3 or 4 pages (of his essays) then again he says he has hammered his brain all day and not written a line. It seems hardly possible words and ideas came from him so copiously. In getting ready to write his essay on Diderot he read 20 big French books, one [crossed out: per] a day, reading 9 a.m. to 10 P.M. hardly stopping to eat and smoke. If his bodily digestion was bad his mental digestion was tremendous. What a mental mill to grind such grist day after day. 27. A thick threatening sky in the morning. Screen gravel again up by the creek till noon. In afternoon rain sets in with some sleet in the air. To-night I sit again in the empty house and console myself as best I can with books etc. while "I-know" snores [crossed out: by] beside the stove. 28 Thunder this morning and brief dashes of rain. A downpour all night. Even the side hills afloat this morning. Springs gushing out everywhere. A great prodigality of rain since May 1st A drunken spendthrift trying to see how soon he could go through a large fortune Dec. 1 A bright Sunday and cold. Spend it in P. In the afternoon Julian and I take a long walk, J's tongue running all the time. 3 Back home yesterday. To-day our first snow squall from the north and pretty cold Worked an hour in the morning in the vineyard, sat in doors rest of the day reading. A despatch from Roxbury; must up at 6 in the morning and out there again on Hirams business. A dismal prospect. To-night the wind roars about the house as my dog and I sit here by the kitchen stove. 4 Clear and cold. At Roxbury to-day. Hiram does not appear at the village as agreed upon, so I go home to seek him. Chant and Johnny are cutting wood down near the road. Find only a strange woman at the house; does not know here Hiram is. left home in the morning, may be back in 3 or 4 days, and may not, and she is very short about it. John Tyler is up taking care of his stock. It is very strange that he does not know where Hiram is, nor when he is coming back. He has evidently gone off to avoid me, poor soul! I stay all night and sleep (a little) in the cold chamber. In the morning return to the village and report the disappearance of Hiram to my lawyer. We conclude to send sheriff up and take possession of his stock and othe personal property. It begins to snow. I walk up to Uriah Bartrams. Uriah is well, but nearly 81 years old. Spent an hour or more with him. The death of Jim was a severe blow to him. He shows no childishness like father at his age, says calmly that he is nearly through with this world. At dusk I conclude to go out to Edens, may be Hiram is there. I walk up from the village in a light snow. As I reach the house I see Hiram through the window. I felt ashamed and humiliated for him. I go in and greet them all barely speaking to Hiram. He looks confused and guilty. I quickly open on him, tell him the sheriff is in possession and that heis to be sold out etc. etc. Much talk and discussion follow. I try to show him how utterly hopeless it is for him to hope to go on with the farm without ruining me etc. Then to bed; poor fitful sleep. Up early Hiram in a hurry now to get back home. We walk across the mountains through wind and snow. As we toil up the mountain I note how troubled and care worn he looks; he stoops as if bearing a great burden; my heart bleeds for him. I know how he is weighed down, but nothing can be done he has lost the battle, the old farm and home he cannot keep. I am powerless to help him more. The roof over my head is threatened. We reach home before noon; after dinnerwe go to the village. Hiram goes reluctantly. He will walk behind me, as if I were leading him with a rope, leading him to the slaughter. I could fly to get away from the painful business. At the lawyers office Hiram deeds the farm to me and turns over all his personal property, signs away everything he has in he world. Poor boy, and he does it so readily, like a child. Then we go back to the old home. I sleep near him in the old chamber, or try to sleep, as he does, but neither of us sleeps much. I spend a week in R. trying to sell or rent the place, and let Hiram stay there. One afternoon I walk 5 miles and back through the mud to see a man who wants to buy a farm.I chop wood and work about the place. No man stands to his offer to buy I shall have to rent it. Much trouble and sorrow. Have about $3000 at stake in it. Must keep a home there for Hiram if possible. Some bright days and many stormy ones. 11 Back to W.P. to day and then to P. 13 Warm and pleasant, burn the grape vine trimmings. 14 Our first snow, about 5 inches. 15 Pretty cold and the sleigh bells jingling. 17 Warm and rainy again. In the morning I am off to Roxbury once more.21 Spend 4 days at the old home do not sell the farm, no buyer but to-day rent it to George Brandow. Will this plunge me deeper into the sea of trouble? May easily be that the worst is not yet. We shall see On Thursday the 19th I walk over the mountains to the head of Red Kill to George's place, about 14 miles both ways, through mud; but I am not much fatigued; far less it seems to me than when I made the same trip as a boy. It is a bright lovely day for Dec. A warm week on the whole, [crossed out: to] with but little frost. Show all goes with south wind and rain. Return to-night much relieved, the burden of the farm seems offMy shoulders for a moment, tho' the thought of Hiram still sends a pang through my heart. 22. Rainy and warm. Julian and I take a walk in the afternoon after the sun comes out. 23. A bright lovely Dec. day like late October. Came up to W.P. to-day and learn that my dog "I-know" is dead, killed Friday night by the gravel train as he tried to pass under it. It sends a deep pang through me; my faithful dog, my sole companion these days and nights on the farm. I sit here in the kitchen of my deserted house to-night without him. Every now and then, halfforgetting, I turn to see where he is, or to wonder why he does not come. I-knows only fault was his excessive good nature, and his cowardice in the presence of other dogs or of any form of supposed danger. Very intelligent and handsome and gentle as a lamb. Even the cats imposed upon hiim and made a rug of him. Fit mate of his weak and sensitive master! I am less grieved than when my other dogs diedor were killed, because I have had experience, and will not be caught that way again -- will not again allow a dog to take such deep hold upon my affection. After a time I suppose I can lose dogs without emotion. But how I shall miss the faithfulcreature from my solitary life, and how long will his memory be fresh in my heart! I brought a basket of bones for him as usual, which now the cats will have to gnaw. Worked this afternoon putting manure on the currant cuttings. 25. Christmas: Spend it in P. with my family; very warm like May. Clear, wind S.W. In forenoon Julian and I walk up to College Hill and sit a long time on the grass talking of wars of History, and of Greek architecture and art. We can see our house and W.P. and the view on all sides is wide and pleasing. Rather [crossed out: of] a grim and unpleasant Xmas dinner; Mrs B. in a state as usual. In afternoon J. goes to a variety entertainment at Opera House, and late I walk down thesouth road and into the woods; sit a long itme on a rock amid the hemlocks and see the sun go down warm as May; no life in Nature save two nuthatches. In the dusk I walk back home with long long thoughts. 26. Rain last night and this morning. Come up home on the little boat. Sun out before noon. Work in afternoon with Van Aken setting posts etc. Bees out of the hive. In afternoon wind begins to rise and the temperature to fall. At 4 P.M. we bury poor "I-know" back of the shed in a grave Julian dug last spring; for what purpose neither he nor I knew at that time. Little did we think our dear dog was to be buried there.27. Clear and colder; froze a little last night, but not enough to stop the plough. Work to-day with Van Aken again setting posts and wiring grape vines. Enjoy it very well. There is peace in the house here, and if the fine weather lasted I should stay here all winter. -- Dr. Johnson did not succeed in embodying his tremendous personality in any form of literature. His power was a personal one, largely physiological, and is developed by personal contact. In this he was like the great mass of able men of any age, politicians, lawyers, orators etc. men of action etc. men often of strong and imposing personalities, who yet can produce no adequate effect with their pens; probably have no soul power; the writing is colorless andcommonplace. Even such a scholar as Gladstone has written nothing that holds or commands us. Carlyle was much more successful in putting himself in literature than was Dr J. or Gladstone. Wendell Phillips and Summer have left nothing that will live as literature. [crossed out: Neither] Nor [crossed out: has] have Clay or Choate or Chapin, and Beecher but very little. Lincoln had the power to impart himself, to stamp himself upon his utterances, and probably he is the only President that had. Nearly all state papers read alike. It may not be the greatest but it is a rare gift, this power or faculty of imparting an individual flavor to the written page. Is not this style? 28 A lovely Indian summer day, warm, clear, still. What deilght to have to go forth to work in the field. The grass is green and the fields dry. Worked this forenoon in vineyard. In afternoon go to P. 30 Lovely day; work in vineyard with Van. 31. Clear and cold. Back to P. in Black 1890 January 1st Overcast with mist and light rain. Aaron Johns comes about noon. Greatly rejoiced to see him again, after near three years. All day we sit and talk. In evening walk the streets and sit for a while in a saloon. Sleep together at night, the first since '84.2 Warm and moist. Aaron leaves for home in the morning, very loth to see him go. No man whose society I enjoy more. Go up to W.P. in afternoon; very warm; bees humming about; how the stones and rocks do sweat. Back at night. 3d. Bright and mild; no frost. 4 At W.P. most of the day. Clean up the kitchen floor and then help Van set posts. Get very warm mopping off the floor. At the beginning of the new year I find myself in very good health, apparently stronger and better than in many years; no more dizziness, rarely any heart fluttering and able to stand long walks without fatigue. The worst symptoms are melancholy, loneliness, and a sense of it being late in theday with me. Part of this may be due to [crossed out: the fact of] domestic infelicities and to the fact that my home at W.P. is broken up. If I could be there and have all inside as it should be, I should be fairly happy. But I am growing old; this incessant retrospection is one sign, if I needed any evidence besides my mirror. 8 pm. A despatch from Eden saying that Hiram is at his house and has a light stroke of apoplexy, and to come at once! How quickly the gloom thickens around me, and how all my feeling against Hiram suddenly changes. This then is what his weak and foolish conduct means -- this thing has been coming upon him a long time; his brain has been slowly giving way. Alas, alas, what shall I do? Can not go to-night.and what could I do anyway. Poor brother, has the giving up of the old farm indeed broken your heart? Alas, alas, it was inevitable; I could do no more. What a burden the whole subject has been to me, and may be the heaviest burden of all is yet to come. Suddenly the thought of Hiram and my love for him overtops everything else. We shall all go that way, probably -- apoplexy. Hiram first, and not yet 63. No doubt his work is done, if his life is yet spared. 5 Sunday. Warm and moist. In afternoon Julian and I walk up to the asylum and sit long on the pine needles under the trees looking out over a fine landscape to the north. We talk of many tings, but my heart cries incessantly Hiram, Hiram! We get back near nightfall. 6 Up to WP today; light sprinkles of rain; warm as May; everyting sweats. I paint the floor in dining room, my thoughts all the time yonder amid the mountains. The grass grows, bees hum, insects dance in the air, caterpillars crawl about, bluebirds call; fear this unseasonable warmth so prolonged will injure the trees and vines. Am quite certin that i never saw the like before. What news from yonder will a day bring forth?January 13. Since my last entry quite a cold snop with a little snow ending in hail and rain. To-day at W.P. again, warm as May again, bees humming, light sprinkles of rain; wind S.W. clearing off in afternoon with signs of cold wave. News from Eden on Thursday that Hiram had gone home better. Apparently in no danger. Feb 26. Since my last entry have spent most of time in P. By no means a good time or a profitable one. Mrs. B. sick most of the time with the gripe and very cross. I managed to write a couple of pieces one week, butbut they have little merit. Read a good deal. Froude's Oceana and his trip to the West Indies; very entertaining books. You get this from Froude which you get from few other travelers; you get a good style, and you get glimpses of all the notable men in the country he visits. Froude hunts them up and has a word with them. He writes with great ease and fullness. Read other books of travel to S.A. and to Java, etc. The winter so far as remarkable as the summer, not another such in this century. No cold no snow; not a pound of ice yet gathered in the Hudson River Valley; no skating but once or twice. Grass green all winter and flowers in bloom. Saw blueperiwinkles in the open air in January, and on Feb 20, a maple tree in P red with bloom. Skunk cabbage in bloom Feb 20. Four inches of snow last week, but none before since Dec. Fog and gloom this morning, but soon the fog lifted, and the sun came out, and the day has been lovely. Warm as May, bees out of the hive, and blue birds calling. Came up from P. yesterday and to-day opened the campaign; sawed wood in forenoon, and set posts in afternoon with my new man DuBois. The little boat resumed her trips to-day. While at supper to-night in the dining room a [crossed out: muskito] mosquito appeared and finally settled on my hand and began to suck my blood. When I could see the blood begin to show in his abdomen I killed him. The first time I ever saw a [crossed out: muskito] mosquito in winter. Strange to say his bite [crossed out: left] caused no itcing. Another was see before we left the table. To "put the true praise and set it on foot in the world" is the function of Criticism. (The phrase from Pepy's Diary.) March 6. A driving snow storm form the north, began last night; looks like a blizzard. By far the most severe touch of winter we have had. Been here since Tuesday the 4th at work in the vineyards. Heard through Abigail of the death of Dr Hull in Olive; an old friend of my boyhood and of my family's. When I first started out in the world in '54 I [crossed out: came] went to his house. How much have I been there since that time! How much harm I have been there since that time! How many letters we have exchanged, how many miles I have ridden with him over that rough country! He visited me in Washington and has been twice here. He was a very friendly, jovial man, but not profound. I once studied medicine with him for 2 months; in his office I wrote my one poem "Waiting" in 1862. How many associations are connected with his name! Peace to his ashes. (Saw him last at Father North's funeral in Sept. last.)6th Storm abates a little, but very windy and cold. A flock of pine grosbeaks in front of my study windows feeding on the buds of the Norway spruces. No red once among them. Some of them a sort of bronze color on head and rump. Have not seen this bird before for 8 or 10 years. I heard of them in this locality ten days ago. 7. Cold after the storm; a rugged bit of winter; mercury down to zero or below; snow 5 or 6 inches 9 Clear and cold; some thin ice has at last been gathered on the ponds in this seciton 12 Very warm, 73 degrees. Snow all gone. Heard robin and piping frogs to-day. 13. Up home to-day and at work in vineyard; cloudy and still, a little cooler. Hear [crossed out: ???] several peepers tonight; a very welcome sound. 14 A slow rain from the north; air still and thick. How the sparrows sing, how the snow birds chirp and chatter 12 M. Rain becomes hail and snow but does not stop the happy sparrows. Now the great sodden flakes come swiftly down; they fall as swiftly as snowballs the air is all streaked with them. Fields of dirty floating ice on river.-- "If children grew up according to early indications" says Goethe "we should have nothing but geniuses; but growth is not merely development; the various organic systems which constitute one man spring one from another, follow each other, and even consume each other, so that after a time scarcely a trace is to be found of many aptitudes and manifestations of ability. 18 Fair cool March day; much sunshine, considerable wind. Worked all day in vineyard bracing the posts, Zeke with me Weather looks promising.19. A driving snow storm set in at 6 1/2 A.M. Now at 1 P.M. the air is thick with snow from the north, with 7 or 8 inches on the ground. Seldom have I seen it snow faster. The biggest storm of the season. Not nearly so cold as the last. Snow pretty damp. 20 Snow fell about 9 inches. Going off rapidly to-day. 26 A week of much rain and storm. Came up home to day from P. Worked in the vineyard putting up wire. Heard phoebe bird to-day, also clucking frogs (rana Sylvaticus) Much water in ground. 27. 11 A.M. am sitting in my vineyard waiting for my part in putting up wire. Zeke is at other end of row putting in staples. When he gets back here I rush in with nippers and tongs, cut the wire and stretch it while Zeke drives home the staples. Day bright and lovely, wind fitful and capricous; sparrows sing all about me. What a variety of songs they have; robins call and sing, phoebe calls; clucking frogs. Find first liverwort a few moments ago, sweet scented; a little red butterfly dances past, river looksvery muddy. Am happy in sitting here and drinking in the beauty of the day. Storm due to-morrow. 28. Rain and snow. Dark and chilly. I sit in my study by the open fire. We are probably near the center of the storm; no wind, and rain in short, sudden spurts, threatening to be heavy, but ceasing after a few minutes. Ice on trees. Send off Country Notes to-day -- not much worth -- a pot-boiler. 1890 April 1st April has come again. Welcome to April. The ground white with snow this morning, a light feathery snow that came silently in the night. Nearly clear and not cold. How the sparrows sang as I went over the P.O. the fox sparrows leading the choir! Work in vineyard. Snow all gone before noon. Colder in afternoon. Poor sleep last night. God to H. in afternoon; find colts foot in bloom, and walk in woods above station.2d The second of the April days, clear as a bell. The eye of the heavens wide open at last. A sparrow day, how they sang! And the robins, too, before I was up in the morning. Now and then I could hear the rat, tat, tat, of the downy at his drum. Work all day in vineyard putting up [???] and wire. How many times I pause to drink in the beauty of the day. Not very warm, but just right for work.April 3 Another birth day, my 53d and a more lovely April day so far never came down out of heaven. Perfectly clear with a slight film in the air as of dissolved pearls. Such a sparrow day! Over near the station heard a remarkable sparrow song; it caught my ear when I was a long way off. Its chief feature was one long clear note, very strong, sweet and plaintive, a loop of sound. To the eye the song was like this a very original song; never heard one like it before. Spent the morning again in my vineyards, but am threatened with a head ache. Mrs. B. and Julian in P. P.M. Head ache over. Mr Rhones comes for the currant cuttings. How delicious the day. Walk up to the old mill in afternoon and back on the R.R. track. Turtle doves here, also high-hole. A lovelier birth-day I never had and all alone too. Only two reminders are from N.Y. from Mrs Fletcher, and the other from P. from Miss T. Burn the brush and rubbish in the garden. 4. Rain to-day -- warm, delicious from S.W. Do not work much, draw a little manure, and graft the pear tree, which I meant to have done yesterday in honor of my birth day. 5. Day of great brightness after the rain, air winnowed by the north wind, the world flooded with light. An April day out of the north. Work in forenoon getting manure from ice house stables. In afternoon burn brush heap and help with manure. Am fairly happy such days as the world goes. 11. Much rain the past week. No warmth yet. Currant bushes beginning to lea[crossed out: ve]f out. To day a bright cold day from the north. Feels as if there was yet snow in the air. The April days are passing. They have much of the old charm. Miss the purple finch this spring, tho' I heard one to day. The little bush sparrow two days ago. How I like to walk out after supper these days. I stroll over the lawn and stand on the brink of the hill. The sun is down; the robins pipe and as the dusk comes on indulge in that loud chidingnote or scream, whether in anger or fun I never can tell Up the road in the distance is that thicket [crossed out: and scream] of the multitudinous voices of the peepers. With long long thoughts and sad sad thoughts I stand or stroll about. An April twilight is unlike any other. 12 Lovely day. Julian comes from P. and spends the day here. We plough the ground under the hill for the Moors Early. In opening the furrows for the plants I guide the team by walking in their front. How I soaked up the sunshine to-day. At night I glowed all over. My whole being had an earth bath. There was a feeling of freshly plowed land in my mind The furrow had struck in; the sunshine had photographed it upon my soul. 13. Sunday. A warm, even hot April day. The air is full of haze, the sunshine golden. In afternoon Julian and I walk out over the country north of P. It is hot. Every body is out. All the paths and by-ways are full of boys and young fellows. Julian talks all the time of high pressure and low presssure engines; thinks he knows all about the difference but I do not. He bores me with his engines. We wit on a wall long time by a meadow and orchard and drink in the scene. It is delicious. April to perfectionSuch a sentiment of spring everywhere. The sky is partly overcast, the air moist, just enough so to bring out the odors, a sweet perfume of bursting growing things. One could almost eat the turf. All about the robins sang. In the trees the crow black birds cackled and jingled athward these sounds came every half minute the clear strong note of the meadow lark; the larks were very numerous and were love making. Then the high hole called, and the brush sparrow talked all together it was very enjoyable. Then we went up on Reservoir hill and gave the eye a wider range and tried to drink deeper draughtsof this April [crossed out: ???] nectar. In the forenoon went to church with Mrs. B. and heard a rather common place Methodist sermon. 14 A repetition of yesterday in the matter of the day, hot, hazy, with intermittent shadow and sunshine. Arbutus days I call them, everybody wants to go to the woods for arbutus; it all most calls one. The soil calls for the plough, too; the garden calls for the spade; the vineyard calls for the hoe. From all about the farm voices call come and do this, or do that. We obey the call to set out the vines and make a good beginning this afternoon. A little rain. How the peepers pile up the sound to-night!A characteristic feature of these rare days I forgot to mention -- namely the broad converging lines (spokes of light) from the sun through the rifts in the clouds; the sun "drawing water" as they say -- a sign of dry weather usually, also the toads trilled their long drawn br-br-br-r-r-r. all day long 15. A sudden change last night, cool and windy to day from the north; The whole feeling, sentiment, aspect of nature has changed. I work with my coat on most of the day. Finish setting out the grapes. Very tired to-night. I find I cannot stand much hard work, but think I can walkas well as ever I could. 17. Still fair and warmer; ground getting dry. Julian comes up to-day. We set out peach trees. In afternoon J. and I go fishing up in the creek, snaring suckers. A pleasant incident. The bright April day, the full, clear pebbly stream, the wavering, flickering vanishing forms of the suckers seen through the deep running water, and our eager peering and reaching. Take two fine ones, lose several others. J. returns to P. at night. 19. Colder from the north, but clear and dry. Froze quite hard last night. The river veryrough this morning. Shad trees quite white, and shad boats breaching the wind and waves. 20. Bright, dry, cool day, Spend the forenoon in the woods with Sherwood. March marigolds ready to bloom. The heath thrush in song. 23 Bright, dry, dreamy, smokey April days. They fill me with the old longing, the longing for the old days and the old home. On the little boat the other day I fell to thinking of father again (what day do I not think of him and mother) of how unlike his life was to mine, how contented he was. The horizon was the boundary of the world tohim. [crossed out: He] It held all that he cared for or thought of, his farm, his wife, his family, his church, his neighbors. He was like a child in many ways, no ambition, no desire to travel. He could not have been hired to go to Europe. He read no books but his Bible and hymn-book and weekly paper. The great world outside troubled him but little. He filled his place, he was thoroughly rooted. My sensibilities and longing and ambitions and misgivings, he knew not. Happy Man. He had a home, which I really have not. My loneliness he never knew. What indeed would father have done alone, without mother and his children! -- No rain for 10 days and but little signs of any. A god send to the farmers. Swallow here this morning, and yellow rumped warbler. 23d Smokey day, partly cloudy. Clouds slow and veiled by the smoke. April fires raging somewhere. Everybody is burning up their rubish. Julian comes up, and spends afternoon. Cherry blossoms opening. First robin and egg shell on the road, dropped by crow [crossed out: of] or jay. I burn bush and rubbish and potter about. Rain much needed.27 Sunday. Slow warm rain, began yesterday afternoon. Julian and I walk to the cemetery on South ave, P. Rain very heavy in the west, but very moderate here. Never remember to have seen the grass of so vivid a green as this April. the excessive rain fall of last year and the mild winter must have much to do with it. Crops of all kinds ought to grow well this year. There must be more ammonia than usual in the soil. 28. A bright lovely day; begin moving back from P. doubtless I shall regret it soon enoughTo-night is soft moon light, a young moon, air motionless I hear the shouts and snaps of the fishermen in the river and see the light of their lanterns feathred up and down, a delicious night. May 1st A bright, warm, delicous May morning. Cherry trees a mass of bloom. Pear trees beginning to bloom. Currant bushes in full leaf. Many trees in Langdons woods touched with tender green. The oriole, king bird wood thrush whippoor will have arrived. Would like to stop the [crossed out: wheel] clock of Time and prolong this day.It is not honey which the bee gathers from the flowers, but sweet water, or cane sugar. The bee takes this, digests it, adds something to it and makes honey. In red clover and in columbine you can taste the sweet, but it is not honey. [crossed out: People] Those who read my books think I get my honey direct from Nature, but I do not; I get the crude material there, but the product I try to give forth is as much mine as Natures. Unless what I see and oberve has passed through my heart and imagination and becomesmy product, it is of little interest or value. --It is said that there is a fish in the deep sea that can and does swallow a fish 8 to 10 times as large as itself. It seizes its victim by the tail and slowly engulfs it, its mouth and stomach distending enormously. May 5. A warm delicous rain last night, an inch of water much needed. Very humid and warm this morning. Some appletrees in bloom. A snatch of bobolink melody this morning from the air overhead. As I writethe song of the wood thrush song sparow, [crossed out: ???] house wren, the call of the meadow lark, oriole come through my open door, I hear the songs of warblers also. How curious it is that man in his enormous egotism has made himself believe that he is some exceptional product; that he has a special and extra or super natural endowment, a soul, and that to bring him forth has been the aim and object of all creation. All other creatures he believes are mortal, but he is immortal. How he glorifies himself. But in the eye of science he is part and parcel of the rest; just as ephemeral as summer flies, and no more the end and aim of the creation, and no more endowed with an independent principle called the soul. -- Fine shower in afternoon May 6. A rainy day from the N.W. Heavy all forenoon, the ground thoroughly soaked. Heard hermit thrush in woods back of Highland station yesterday at 5 P.M. 7. Fair and calm after the heavy rain of yesterday. All the woods and groves full of young leaves. Green shade has come again. Snow from the cherry trees covers the ground. The mellow hornof the bumble bee is upon the air. Again the dendelions star the lawns and road sides. Keeping house here again since April 30, contrary to my wishes and expectations. Expect the same old story. Some seasons the cherry, peach and maple blossoms come at same time. This year a wide difference. This year a wide difference. No hard maple blossoms yet on my trees. Was the mild winter unfavorable to the maple? Its sap is certainly less sweet than usual. Later -- will be no maple bloom this year. 9. The orchard bloom has come again. Its perfumeis on the air. Before I can fully realize it, it will be gone. Warm growing weather with light rain this morning. [crossed out: 10] 11 More rain last night from the north, a cool wave. Dreamed last night of seeing Carlyle when he was a little boy of 9 or 10. He was crying and his nose was fearfully snotty. I was reading yesteday in his letters. [crossed out: 11] A walk to the woods in the afternoon. Saw my white crowned sparrow. Saw many cuckoos and rose breasted grosbeaks; birds very numerous. The first tanager in a plowed field.12 A lovely May morning, clear, still warm. How benificent Nature seems such mornings, how ripe and tender and sweet the earth. 13 "When the south wind in May days With a sort of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall And, with softness touching all", etc, etc. that is this day with its white shining air and brisk south wind, scattering the apple blossom and strewing the river with white caps. The air is tinged with milk. How the branches toss their young leaves. Cuckoos very numerous. Read Emersons "May Day" and dip into other poets. "Only to children children sing Only to youth will [crossed out: youth] spring be spring."14 A brisk rain last night from S.W. Heard my white crown sing this morning. He sat in one of Atkins cherry trees. Fee-u, fee-u, fiddy, fu, with a pathos and tenderness about the long notes that no other sparrow song equals. Not so brilliant and loud as that of the fox sparrow, but oh, so plaintive and far away. A song in keeping with the rare beauty of the bird. 17. Much rain the past two days, not heavy but long continued. Things growing very fast. Saw a partridge on her nest yesterday in woods south of P.17. Fair day, spent part of forenoon and part of the afternoon in woods; a delicious time. The pink ladies slipper in bloom. 20. A brisk rain at noon to-day. 21. Bright cool day. Go to P. with young Dr Gordon, take him to the asylum, a sad case; bright handsome young fellow whose mind has become distempered from some cause, disappointed love he says. 24. Bright lovely May days of late, getting pretty warm to-day. The world very beautiful, and lifewith me well worth living. Take more interest in birds and in my old habits of observation than usual. Arms on grape vines about one foot in length, Season later than last year. 30. Plenty of rain on Monday and Tuesday. Fine cool weather since. To day, decoration day, beautiful as a dream and quite warm. Julain and I go fishing in forenoon up in the mouth of black creek; take a lot of yellow perch. The river a great blue mirror this afternoon. 31. A day like a great jewel, clear-cut; crystaline, transparent. The air as clear as spring waterSummer warmth, except at night. Go to H. and run 3/4 mile to catch boat on my return. Grass early this year; red and white clover in bloom for some days, other things are late. June 1st Bright, clear, warm, dazzling. Put net over cherry tree. Looks like dry weather. 6 Hot, hot; heavy shower last night with extraordinary electric displays, struck and burned a barn near Highland. 8 June day like a [crossed out: draft] draught of clear spring water, clear, bright, cool, a perfect day, after a hot week. Heat Thursday and friday about 90 degrees.Strawberries not yet ripe, cherries nearly so. Daisies whitening the fields. Too wet to plow friday and Sat. Grapes nearly ready to bloom. Tornadoes and cyclones in the West last week. Heat 94 degrees in N.Y. 11 Hot day. A storm of wind and rain at noon that damaged my grapes, breaking off arms at a great rate. Mr. Sickley and friends up from P. 14 Heat and rain. Begin to fear a repetition of last year. Rains all night, and the day like a tunnel under a river Cherries ripe. Corrected proof of Faith and Credulity for N.A.R. rather feeble: wonder that the editor took it. 20. Cool and delightful, no rain for past 6 days. Wednesday pretty hot, 88 degrees. Prospects look brighter, cutting our grass. 21 Slow light rain from S.W. 22. Julian and Zeke and I spend the day at Sherwoods, gathering wild strawberries, a memorable day, a wild rocky mountainside covered with the delicious fruit; gather nearly a bushel. Their flavor brings back my boyhood. Swim in the lake and gather our first pond lilies.28. A hot dry week. Heat very great in the West; cooler here by reason of a storm off Nova Scotia. Warming up again to day. Made first shipment of currants the 24th also shipped 20 cups rasp. currants about half off. Weather suits me at last. 29 Sunday. A clear placid summer day of great beauty. Pretty hot at mid-day. I lounge about and read the magazines and papers and sleep and meditate in my chair. Getting pretty dry.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: March 5, 1889 - July 1, 1889
Text: sparrow song 11 Home today. Snow all gone, the river open and spring at hand. Return to P. for the night but I am done with P. for this season 12 Little Black makes her first trip to-day. Alone again in my house, Mrs B. and Julian in P. 14 Robins and blue birds here and very happy, no frost in the ground. A wretched day to me from the discovery that the Canada ashes have killed my raspberries and about 450 of my new grape vines. I am fairly [crossed out: sick] made ill by the discovery. Work...
Show moresparrow song 11 Home today. Snow all gone, the river open and spring at hand. Return to P. for the night but I am done with P. for this season 12 Little Black makes her first trip to-day. Alone again in my house, Mrs B. and Julian in P. 14 Robins and blue birds here and very happy, no frost in the ground. A wretched day to me from the discovery that the Canada ashes have killed my raspberries and about 450 of my new grape vines. I am fairly [crossed out: sick] made ill by the discovery. Work all day hauling off the ashes. A charming day, if I could only enjoy it.15 No sleep last night from thinking of my loss. To have lost the value of money, would not have troubled me half so much. But I have lost something more valuable than money; the work of my hands is undone. 17 Saturday. Julian came up last night and makes my heart glad for a few hours. In the evening we discuss our family difficulties. He stoutly takes the side of his Mamma, and with tears in his eyes lectures me on my duty to her. He cannot see the merits of my side of the case at all. He takes entirely her view; it is the irony of fate. Well, it is best so. We return to P. to-gether.19 Gray, overcast days with wind in the north. Storms coming up the coast. The skunk cabbagge in bloom for some days. 21 Several days of chilly north and N.E. wind blowing toward the storm said to be moving up the coast. No sunshine for 3 days. Some snow last night Lonely and disconsolate these days Of all men I need a home, a fireside and congenial people about me. The first phoebe and the first peeper two days ago22d Day of great beauty, sunshine at last; north wind still. Mrs B and Julian came home yesterday from P. We take up the old problem of housekeeping again, but with a girl in view. The ground is in good order to work. 23. Very lovely and dry for March. Go to P. In afternoon and spend a delightful hour in the woods back of Highland Station while waiting for train 24 Finer and warmer yet -- 62 degrees in shade; a perfect day. The hepaticas budded but tardy in coming. In evening walk over through the field and by the marshy places looking for spring tokens. Anominous silence in the marshes One expects to hear the piping and clucking frogs on such spring days, but I hear only one faint hesitating note. It seems that neither frogs nor flowers will come in March Half this warmth in April will bring them both. I suppose there is some more potent quality in the sunlight at that time, even if the warmth is no greater. They are secured by time clocks and will not open till the hour strikes. The pussy willows are expanding, and I found hazel just showing its faint red star of a blossom. Heard a shrike in a tree back of Atkins. The mourning dove here. 26 A sudden change to cold, froze hard last night, still clear and wind in north. Dry. New girl came yesterday. 28 Rain at last from North West, much needed. Ground has been in fine order for work, but we have done but little. Planted peas on the 25th Yesterday I dug nearly all day among my grapes. Gloomy and depressed these days. 31. Looks wintry again; Snowing hard to-day. New girl left yesterday; a regular blow up again in the kitchen. April 1st Welcome to April; ground white with snow; nearly all gone by night. 3d My birth days come and go just like any other days Nature seems to take no note of it! But what long sad thoughts are awakened in my mind. How inevitably my heart goes back to the old spot and to the memory of those whom I shall see no more! A cloudy day with thick air and slight showers from the west. I work part of the day under the hill in the vineyardNot very cheerful these days for some reason. The light of the world seems surely going out for me. The fox sparrow sings but it hardly wakens the old response. Health pretty good, no unusual symptoms should probably sleep well if Mrs B. and Julian were well and did not cough at night. The liverwort in bloom down by the river. So goes my 52nd birth day. 7. Mostly bright days from the north, pretty chilly. To-day is clear, and in afternoon Julian and I go to the woods; no flowers yet; ants just out languidlypatroling their mounds. Frog spawn in the pools. We sit a long time on a rock in the woods and enjoyed the genial warmth and the clean open woods, with the creek glancing and murmuring below us. 9 Bright dry cool April days from the north. The storms coming up the coast cause the wind to set in that direction. Pretty sad these days, probably some physical reason; my mind is turned to the past; the present seems thin and cold. Is this age? -- There are some things we never get used to. I can never get used to my wifes tongue; it irritates me more and more as I grow older.I am all raw from its constant lashing; and what is more I never expect to heal up. An ignorant, insolent, ill natured woman -- what is there in the universe worse than that? How the river dances and sparkles this morning. 11 Thirty five years ago this day I began my first school in Tongore, Ulster Co. I walked down the [crossed out: even] afternoon before from Shokan. Near Olive city I met Warren Scudder, a neighbor of ours at home. How good he looked to me, a familiar face in a strange land. I could have hugged him. He had been down below to deliver a yoke of oxen he had sold. I remember the peeping frogs were calling, and this too was a voice from home; they had not woke up yet when I left home. Of the first school I remember [crossed out: the] perfectly the faces of many of the scholars; they are as distinct before me as if I had seen them yesterday. Many of them are now dead -- two or three of the boys were slain in battle at Gettysburg. Of my subsequesnt schools I remember but few of the faces. 12 This is one of the delicious April morning when life tastes so sweet; warm, moist (after a slight shower in the night), hazy, the sky full of soft indolent clouds, the river placid and the birds jubilant. The little bush sparrow chants his delicious song this morning, the kinglet's tiny wren song is in the evergreens, the robins are vociferous. This is the time when the robins have their squabbles; what a racket they make with wings and voice when rivals meet in jealous frays! The meadow lark too, she is here, and her blade like note, keen and piercing comes up from the meadows. And the high-hole, [crossed out: ???] quick, quick, quick, quick, he calls, and brings back my youth. The long-drawn tr-r-r-r-r of the toad has been upon the air for several days. Stop and listen and you hear the downywood pecker at his drum. This too is a very welcome sound to me. How I delight to see the plough at work this moring. The earth is ripe for it, fairly lusts for it, and the fresh turned soil looks good enough to eat. Lew is ploughing the currants and Travis is ploughing beyond them for grapes. I look after them and help mark out the grape trenches. Plucked my first blood root this morning -- a [crossed out: fl] full blown flower with a young one folded up in a leaf beneath it [crossed out: and just] only just the bud emerging, like the head of a pappoose protruding from its mothers blanket -- a very pleasing sight. I always suspect either the honesty or the intelligence of the man who claims to see the reasonableness of the Pauline, or popular Christianity. Paul says that "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord except of the Holy Ghost." Neither can he, and as this witness has not been vouched safe to all men, there are a good many honest people in the world, indeed an increasing number of themwho cannot say that Jesus is the Lord. The preliminary twisting of the mind by which this becomes obvious they have never been subjected to. They see Jesus to be a great teacher and prophet, and that he must have been a most marvellous and lovable personality, but further than this they do not see. April 14 Sunday. Bright and cool wind in north. Julian and I walk to the woods. Find a little arbutus; vines mostly barren this year. A rather eventless walk. Weather keeps dry; but little rain the past 4 or 5 weeks. 21 Wonderfully beautiful and delicious -- a river of glass and a sky of soft vapory blue; a mist of foliage on the maples and fruit trees Currant bushes just ready to shake out their blossoms. rye fields and vivid emerald. Slight thunder showers yesterday, rain much needed; no rain for weeks; weather warm; birds jubilant. All the April wild flowers out. The little anemone, trembling and blusing like delicate high bred schoolgirls. In the woods an hour yesterday afternoon, found arbutus and other sweet things Busy the past week setting out grapes, patching up the vineyards, and putting in a new lot [crossed out: back] in raspberry field. In Langdons woods the treesbegin to show their outlines, the willows a vivd green. The swallow arrived on the 15th this year. Am correcting proof of "Indoor Studies", take but little interest in it. 25 Again the maples shake out their tassels; again in the moring their perfune falls upon me as I walk beneath them. Peach and cherry trees in bloom. No rain yet; very dry. Have rented house and vacate it to-morrow; probably a sorry time before me, yet I know that I have got the best of some of the domestic furies.28 A fine rain at last from the S.E. Am agian living in the old house, Julian and I. Mrs B. in P. Think I shall enjoy change. A bad head ache this afternoon. 30. Spring comes on apace. Brown thrasher 3 days ago. Pear trees in bloom. Apples showing the pink. The woods covered with a faint mist of yellowish green. Plowed under the rye; getting ready to set out the grape-vines.1889 May 1st A cool day, nearly clear in forenoon, hazing up in afternoon. Things very green and fresh. Begin setting grape vines in afternoon. Very well suited with new domestic arrangements; think the change will have a good effect upon my health. Nothing to irritate me now about the house -- no womans tongue to blister me. 5. Clear and warm -- the first real May day. Maple leaves nearly out. The flickering leaf shadows are born again and the woods are beginning to wear a thin veil of them. Julian and I walk over to thehemlock canyon and loaf about a couple of hours. The showy orchis just ready to open. The maples are humming with bees. No orioles yet; heard a bobolink this morning before I was out of bed. 7. The warm soft lovely May days continue -- a vernal Indian summer. Oriole yesterday, also king bird and cat bird. The week of bloom What rose garden is every orchard now. I walk through them with long sad thoughts. 11 The wave of [crossed out: bl] the orchard bloom has just passed over us, and I try to believe it awakened the old rapture A hot wave has also just passed over us also; thermometer 90 and 92 in the shade on Thursday and friday. Light shower friday afternoon and a fine rain this morning, clearing off cooler in afternoon. On Friday went up to Olive to see once more father North, no doubt the last time I shall look upon him in life. He is 88 years old; keeps in bed most of the time, mind nearly gone; he knew me and Ursula but still his apprehension wasfeelbe and dim. But the past, his old home, his father and mother and brothers and sisters seem ever present with him. At times he thinks his father and mother are still living and wants to go back home. He calls the names of those who have been dead for 60 years and asks that they do this and that. When his brother came to see him he was determined to go home with him -- to the old homestead. It is very pathetic. His life for 50 or more years past seems to have left little impression but the days of his youth, his father and mother, how deeply these are engraved upon his mind. All the rest is on the surface, but these are in the foundations of his being. I see the same thing in myself. The only permanent and real part of my experience -- that which is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh is my youth, the old home, father and mother. As time goes on these are more and more in my mind, and the rest less and less. The old man is pale and feeble and cannot last long. I carried him in my arms from the kitchen up to his room. While waiting for the train in Kingston, saw in the Tribune the notice of the death of Willian O'Connor my old Washington friend andco-defender of Walt Whitman. A man of extraordinary parts -- but lacking the sanity or moderation of the greatest men. I cannot write about him now. It is too great a subject. 24 Since my last entry the weather has been remarkably growing; frequent light rains and very warm -- not rain enough to affect the sprngs but to keep the ground very moist. We have been hoeing grapes, raspberries, and currants, have tied up young grapes twice. Had Mr Cutler, A Sullivan county farmer and back woodsman to work for me 6 1/2 days; a quaint, racy, old fashionedman (71) whom I much enjoyed; it called up the times of my youth at home. He was like the men father sometimes had to work for him. He always spoke of his wife, (now dead), as "my lady". I am sorry to have him go, but he is homesick for the hills of Sullivan. He was 4 years in the war; has a farm and does not have to work, he says. He has been and is yet a great bark-peeler. It was a treat to see him peel my grape posts. Curiously free from any sort of profanity, or roughness in his speech, a greater hunter and fisher also. -- Later; It turns out that my old Sullivan Co bark peeler is not so correct and proper in his language and manners for nothing; he is not off on a spree, or tear, he takes it out in a big drunk occasionally. June 1st Violent wind from S.S.East the past two days, doing much damage to vineyards and to my young currant patch. Only light dashes of rain with the wind. Many wet days in May but no heavy rain here. Springs low -- none of my drains flow. Pulled the first ripe s. berry to-day. Cherries getting ripe. Julian and I tie up the young vines and hoe among the grapes. Mrs B. in P. Sleep well only every other night for the past weeks. 2d The fierce gale of the past ten days brought a torrent of rain in many parts of the country, and unparalleled destruction of life and property. Johnstown Pa was swept away and probably 10,000 [crossed out: people] persons drowned. Truly an awful calamity. The Potamac river was higher than it seems ever to have been before. The waters reached to the north side of Pa. Ave. The Esopus Creek very high, but the streams here not [crossed out: e] affected; the rain went in heavy columns like an invading army. Such wanton destruction of life by a storm makes the Heavenly Father cant, more cantythan ever. The worst human or inhuman fiend would not do such a thing, if he could. Saturday 8th The past week cool and pleasant; bust pruning grapes and tying up young vines and setting posts etc. Cut our grass also. On the 6th went down to West Point with Wife and Julian and spent the day a very delightful one with Denton. Saw the water seige battery work and the great black balls fly. Rain to-day. New book came yesterday; do not feel much interest in it. June 11 Heavy shower this 4 P.M. The first down pour this spring, the first rain to reach the sources of the springs and wells and fill them up. Washed my side hill somewhat in the new vineyard. Wife came up to-day to clean up our rooms. 16 Very sultry the past week more rain yesterday; three showers, good smart ones; the weeds getting ahead of us. Some of young grape vines are to the top wire. Very hot to-day, but some air stirring. Raspberries getting ripe.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: July 1, 1890 - April 6, 1891
Text: July 1 Hot and dry. 2d 3. Sprinkles of rain from S.W. 4 Cooler. A shower last night, 1/2 inch water. P.M. Two pretty heavy showers this afternoon Rain enough. Spend the day at home. Pick two crates of rasp this afternoon. 5. Clear and cool, a lovely day. 6. Clear and beautiful and very cool. Almost too cool to sit insummer house this morning. My sleep has been as good as of old for some weeks now. My life quite uneventful. No thoughts, no company, but little correspondence, no new books and...
Show moreJuly 1 Hot and dry. 2d 3. Sprinkles of rain from S.W. 4 Cooler. A shower last night, 1/2 inch water. P.M. Two pretty heavy showers this afternoon Rain enough. Spend the day at home. Pick two crates of rasp this afternoon. 5. Clear and cool, a lovely day. 6. Clear and beautiful and very cool. Almost too cool to sit insummer house this morning. My sleep has been as good as of old for some weeks now. My life quite uneventful. No thoughts, no company, but little correspondence, no new books and but rare reference to the old ones. Julian my only companion. Begin girdling grape vines yesterday. 8 Great heat. 15 Hot day after a cool streak. heavy shower at 5 1/2 P.M. 16 Grape rot begins. 17 Go to Highland. 18 Begin spraying vines to-day. Too late, no doubt; expectto lose entire grape crop by black rot. Hell wihtout and hell within. Black rot on one side of me and a "brawling woman" on the other. 19 Cold and showery; showers light. Rarely see it so cold in July, doubt if it checks the rot. 20 Too cold this morning to sit in the summer house. My hands were cold this morning as I went for milk. Mecury 52. 21st Still cold, 50 degrees Highland this morning. Bright and dry to-day. Rot still at work slowly.24. A visit from Dr John Johnston of Bolton, England, a modest quiet, interessting man, 36 years old, born at Annan; went to school in the Academy where Carlyle once taught. A canny young Scotchman. Like him first rate, not much of a talker, a great lover of Whitman whom he had just visited. Mrs B. would not sit at the table with us, nor hardly be civil to Johnston. The devil in her was especially active. He had a pictures of his father and mother, and of his wife. Goes to Canada to-day to visit relatives and then home. 25. Rain sets in and continues all day slowly. 26. Rains again to-day till noon. About 2 inches of water since Thursday night. The grape rot is happy. Expect to see it sweep the vineyards now. 27. Sunday, still, muggy, hot. 31 Go to Sherwoods and spend the day. Very hot, in the nineties. Shower at night. August 1st Hot and wet. 2d Hot and muggy. 3d Hot, wind S.W. much humidity. 4. Hot and oppressive, wind S.W. Expect every day to see grape rot start anew.6. Hot and muggy. Improving in afternoon. A delicious day in the woods. 8 The funeral day of old Mr. Sterling, my Scotch neighor and friend; died suddenly two days ago; got drunk and never got sober. Born in Rutherglen near Glasgow 80 years ago; lived long in G. and worked at his trade of carpentering; worked in the Arcade. Came to this country 30 years ago and settled back here in the woods when his wife died 10 years ago. Came froma great city to a rocky solitude, and was apparently content. A racy, canny Scotchman, with good deal of dignity of character at times. His one failing a passion for strong drink, which got the better of him at times. I was always glad to meet him and shall miss him much. 16. Our first shipment of grapes last night. Cool and dry. 21. Shipped Moors Early to-day. 24. Heavy showers the past week at night. To-day cold, over cast, autumnal. Yesterday likewise. Frosts in N.W. Girdled Champions all off, and part of rest.27 Heavy down pour last night, heaviest of the summer; ground full of water this morning. This P.M. bright and warm. Began shipping warden grapes to-day. Cut 280 lbs. Moors E. and champion all off. Cut one crate of Delawares also. Sept 7. Sunday; Very busy all past week getting off the grapes weather favorable till yesterday afternoon when we had a tremendous down pour which washed the side hill badly -- a thunder shower without any thunder -- the heaviest of the season. Del. and Wordens about all off; Concords about half. Prices high. Best peaches 4 dollarsSept 13 A wet warm week; rain 3 or 4 days, a disgusting rain and mist. Finished Wordens and Del. first of the week. 17 A clear fine day after nearly ten days of rain. One of the wettest Sept. so far I remember in a long time. Rains very heavy and protracted all over the country. In H. in afternoon. 21. Still fair, and getting cool and fall like, about the last of the Concords off yesterday. -- The bee does not gather his honey from the flowers; it is mainly his product; What he gathers from flowers issweet water -- diluted grape sugar. Out of this she makes [crossed out: his] her honey by a kind of digestion and assimilation. It is not honey till the bee is added -- something special and peculiar to itself. It is precisely so with the poet. He gets only the raw material of his poetry from Nature -- himself must be added, his spiritual and emotional quality before it becomes poetry. Indeed it is so with true literature of any kind. Tis what the man himself adds to his facts or truths or teaching that makes it literature. Sept 24. Start for N.Y. to-day for 10 days vacation. Pass a few hous in N.Y. with Gilder, then to Johnsons at Bay Shore at 3 P.M. Day fine. 25 and 26 At J's have a pleasant time. Eat and sleep like a boy. Meet a Mrs Mapes who was saved from death last winter by skillful surgery, a bad case of pneumonia, both lungs invaded. When they saw and she felt she was dying they pumped oxygen into her lungs -- only a small space at the top not congested. She said her feelings were, "Oh do let me die, do not prolong my agony. I am dying, nothing can save me, leave me in peace" Then tumors formed upon her lungs and they opened her through the back, put in pipes and drew the pus[crossed out: s] and water off, and thus faught the disease and conquered. For many weeks afterward she was out of her mind, ideed a maniac from the [crossed out: use] effects of the morphine administered. Gradually she came to herself and is now quite well again. 27 Go to Camden to-day to see Walt. Find him eating his dinner and eating like a well man and looking like one. Am quite shocked at the chaos amid which he lives and which seems to grow worse from year to year. Never saw anything like it in my life. Itfairly stuns one. The table at which he sat was piled up with books and papers and letters as long as they would lay on apperently pitched on with a fork. The dishes holding his dinner were pushed into this mass, how I do not know. All about him the chairs and other tables were piled full and the floor was covered nearly knee deep, an avalanche of litter, dust over all. Another Such room perhaps the world does not hold. It is so terrible that one feels as if he may have to be judged as a poet by that room. The effect was depressing. He is better than for 3 years past except his locomotion and hearing, which are failing. I sit and talktill Horace Traubel appears at 5, when I go home with him to tea, and then to Harneds for the night. 28 A bright Sunday. See Walt again at 11, in the lower room, where more order reigns and where in his big chair by the window he looks as of old. At 5 he comes to dinner at Harneds and we have a fine time. He eats and talks as of old. At 7 he is wheeled home in his chair and I walk by his side and take my leave of him. Then to Church (Unitarian) and listen to a bloodless sermon and nearly fall asleep. How we love the concrete, the real, in poetry, in literature, in art. Indeedwill have it. No wonder then, the people want it in religion. Something tangible and real that takes hold of their concrete natures. Hence the vitality and power of the old creeds. It is not moonshine, however false. It seems real. Such airy nothings as the Unitarians offer can never take hold of the people, or of me either. The old theology outrages one, the new starves one. 29. Bright day. Back to N.Y. Oct. 1st Lovely day. 2d ditto. 3 Rode all day through Mass. From Boston to Po'keepsieAm truly astonished at the look of this famous state; not till I struck our own state in Dutchess Co. did I see a good farming country. It seems to me that less than 25 per cent of the land I saw from the car window was under cultivation, or was worth cultivating. A flat country all grown up to bushes and scrubby pines. Only when we struck the towns was there signs of thrift and prosperity. What a contrast Dutches Co presented! here one spread of fine farms and homesteads. In the Connecticut valley about Northampton is a vast area of beautiful prairie land and that is all I saw till I reached N.Y. 4 Lovely day. At home again. 5 Fine day: get track of a bee tree back in the woods. 8 Cool day of sun and shadow after two days of rain. No frost yet. The white throats are here. 15. A bright lovely day. Go out home in the morning. How deep and strange my feelings as I catch sight of my native hills from the train. I had never before seen it under just such conditions; none of my family there, and the farm mine. Take dinner with sister Abigail and then PM walk up to the old place. George thrashing buckwheat. [crossed out: ???] Walk over the hill and down to Tylers. Spend the night with George. Find he is doing welland can pay the rent. He and Maria have worked like slaves and have done all that could be done. I conclude to let the farm to him for another year. 16 Walk over to Tom Smiths. A bright day with signs of approaching rain. In after noon go over to Curtis'es and spend the night. Have great pleasure in seeing him again. In the morning early he awoke me by calling "John" to his son up stairs. I answered automatically as in the old days when he called me as a boy to get up to milk. A pouring rain all night. 17 Go out to Edens on noon train. Bright and fair. A pleasant visit to Edens. Hiram is there and it seems like old times. How differentfrom my last visit there! 18 Bright day. I climb the mountain in search of basswood trees for crates. Wander about in the still woods on the damp newly fallen leaves, listening to the drumming of the partridges and selecting the tall trees. Eden goes fox hunting, and Hiram goes to the neighbors. Ed. chops wood. Seeing my people again, and my native hills satisfies a longing that has been very keen all summer. Eden seems to be doing well on his farm and I think may keep it. 19 Rain and rain. Return home in afternoon.24. Cold rain all day from the north, a cyclone sweeping the coast. No frost yet to kill tomatoes. Much rain. Work at hauling soil in vineyard and digging out rocks and stones. Nov 10. A fine month so far, no rain to speak of and little frost. Getting quite dry. Only once before this season have ten days elapsed without rain. At work all this month grubbing up trees and rock back of the barn. Health good and life fairly enjoyable. Domestic skies quite bright. Election Day (the 4th) a fair day, partly overcast. The result of the elections a hard blow to Republicans and high tariff men, suits me, who, three years ago cried halt to the tariff bucks. 14 A lovely day, genuine indian summer. At work with Sherwood laying a gutter along the road in the vineyard. 15 Overcast; thick, still, threatening rain, still at work on the gutter. 16 Lovely day. More Indian summer. Julian and I wak over to the steam shovel. Signs of storm at sundown. 17. Thick and murky. Rain began in morning, now at 11 a.m. raining hard. 18 Fair agian. Rain not severe. 19, 20, 21, and 22d all fair days and mild. 23 Sunday. Our first snow squall this morning. The great flakes came down thick and fast for nearly an hour. Now at 10 A.M. sky nearly clear, sun shining, and snow melting. It was only a light white wash Finished clearing up the woods back of the barn yesterday. Grapes all trimmed and laid down. 27. Thanksgiving. Bright; dry, hard cold, freezing nearly all day. A domestic tornado. A long dry spell, the first of the season. Looks to me now like a cold winter. 28 Clear, cold, still; not a cloud. Work at the gutter in vineyard with Sherwood30 Mild, clear in afternoon, hazy. An Indian summer look. Ice on the ponds yesterday 3/4 inch. No rain yet. Dec 1. Clear, dry and cold, wind in North. 7. A week of quite snug winter weather; mercury down to 8 degrees on Tuesday the 2d. Some snow and hail and rain. The ground now covered with a thin coat of amil. The stones covered with ice. No ice in river yet. 14 Another rather snug winters week. Much ice on the river said to be 7 or 8 inches on the ponds. No little boat this week. no snow, no rain. Worked nearlyall the week on lot back of barn -- Is it science or is it democracy, or the time spirit, that has caused the world to become more and more secular, less and less religious for the past 200 years? With all our Christianity, the ancient communities, Egypt, Greece, Rome, were much more religious than we are, that is their lives, both individual and natural, faced much more toward the unseen supernatural powers. The gods played the leading part in their histories; they really play no part at all in ours. Religious motives, fears, hopes etc. entered largely into every act, national and individual. At Plataea, both the Greeks and Persians refrained for 10 days from makingthe attack becasue the oracles and other victims were unfavorable. The armies had their diviners, upon whose word the action hinged. No expedition was undertaken without consulting the oracles, and no action fought without [crossed out: ???] offering sacrifices. Indeed life in the ancient nations was a drama in which the gods always played the leading parts. What havoc was played with the Greeks at Syracuse because of an eclipse of the sun or moon. Religion bore no relation to morality with the ancient races; the most shocking and revolting crimes were committed in the name of the gods; the gods themselves were often immoral. But ours is a religion of morality. Indeed morality is becomingmore and more, religion as such, less and less. -- My first reading in Schopenhauer lately -- "The Wisdom of Life" and wisdom there is in the book and penetration. The style is clear simple and direct, not at all heavy and cumbersome, like most German writing His pessimism crops out here and there, as in this sentence. "There are more things in the world productive of pain than of pleasure" He says the meaning of Philistine is a man with no mental needs -- he is not a son of the muses. He says all the wit there is in the world is useless to him who has none. He says when modesty was made a virtue it was very advantageous to the fools. Fame is something to be won; honor something not something to be lost. Fame never can be lost, but honor once gone is gone forever. The dishonorable act can never be recalled. Vulgarity, he says, is will without intellect; ordinary people take an interest in things only so far as they excite their will, that is their interest is a purely personal one. Card-playing is a mere tickling of the will. But a man of intellect is capable of taking an interest in things in the way of mere knowledge, with no admixture of will; nay such an interest is a necessity to him. The philistine has will, but not intellect. I myself am deficient in will; my wife deficient in intellect -- "Old Jack Sprat could eat no fat", etc. Between us both there is no peace in the householdThe book is upon happiness, and the conclusion of the whole matter is that a man is happy only by reason of what he is in and of himself. He hates Heg[crossed out:le]el, and says this of Goethe: "It is a great [crossed out: mistake to] [???] of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man, to give the whole or the greater part of ones quiet leisure and independence for splendor, rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what Goethe did. My good luck drew me quite in the other direction." Dec. 20 The tenth anniversary of Mother's death, the day clear, still, cold, good sleighing, 6 or 7 inches of heavy snow three days ago on a hard frozen icy ground; river nearly closed, or closed above and below with a large open space in front of us.Mercury down to 4 degrees this morning. I sit in my study and try to write again on Analogy, my old theme of 20 years ago. Julian on the hard snow with his sleigh. Mrs. B. busy and cross in the house. 21 It is interesting to note how man perpetually makes God in his own image. As man becomes more and more humanitarian he makes God more and more humanitarian. God grows benevolent as man grows benevolent. He is no longer the implacable governor and ruler of the universe, he is our heavenly Father, more ready to tender forgiveness than we are to ask it. I do not know whether or not God made man, but it is certain that man made God. 26. A big snow storm from N.E. began early this morning. Looks like old times and feels like it. Can hardly see the ice houses. Snowed yesterday in Va. and Ohio valley. Mercury down to 10 degrees. 27. About one foot of snow. Mild and partly clear to day. 31. Cold rugged winter weather. Mercury fluctuates from 4 [crossed out: above] to 15 above. J. and I had our first skate on the river yesterday. Overcast and threatening snow. -- How many of the notions of mankind are like those of the farmer who assures you that his spring is warm in winter and cold in summerso far as his sensations are concerned and therefore to all intents and purposes it is warm in winter and cold in summer. He has not learned that his senses are relative; that the temperature of the outward medium in which we live and move influences our judgement in such matters. The age in which one lives makes a thing seem hot or seem cold, seem good or seem bad, a [???] heresy or one eye is the [???] opinion of the next. The truth does not vary, but our perceptions of itbut our perceptions of it vary greatly. 1891 January 1st Still, cloudy, inclined to be foggy, mercury 20 degrees. A little snow last night and yesterday. Health good these days, better than last year. Very few of my peculiar symptoms. Digestion better than for a long time. Can even eat mince pie. Mind vigorous, yet no new thoughts or impulses. 2 Warmer, rain and fog, same as one year ago. Now at 3 P.M. cannot see river for fog. But signs of breaking. Mercury 40 degrees. -- Compare such criticism as Lowell's and Stedman's with Matthew Arnold's and you see what their deficiencies are: They lead nowhere, they have nosystem, science. There are no currents of thought in them setting towards certain definite points. They really throw no light on the book or author they discuss; the question are left just where they were before. No organization, no survey of the man from one clearly defined stand point. Perhaps some hint may be given by saying that their criticisms are analytical and never synthetical, they give us no wholes. They are never creative. They never lead us to a window, but at most to a crack or crevice. In some of Lowells shorter paper, as the one on "Emerson as a Lecturer" and on "Thoreau", the results are more synthetical. But there is little evolution, little growth in either L. or S.1891 5 Snow all night and nearly all day from the north, a local storm; pretty cold Looks like the height of winter I sit all day in my study and labor and do not even bring forth a mouse. Indeed, a mouse would be very encouraging. Trying to read Martineau's "Basis of Authority in Religion," a ponderous tone, very tiresome. M. is a deep thinker and a strong effective writer, but he is tiresome, a fatal fault. 6 Bright day after the snow and a little warmer. Again after three years I see before my window a plain of snow where the sparkling river used to be. Two men are now crossing. How their figures stand out in the vivid sunlight on the spotless surface!Jan 10 Clear and cold; down to zero this morning, 6 below over by station. Snow deep, winter full-grown and robust; not much wind yet. Bad head-ache last night; worst for a year. Took up yesterday Renans Life of Jesus. What would be ones feelings if he were to come back to life 100 years hence, a world filled with strangers. How would his own country seem to him all filled with strangers, all the questions, all the leading men, new to him; his own farm [crossed out: and] or house occupied by strangers who had never heard his name.12 Big thunder shower last night bet. 11 and 12. Thundered and lightened and rain poured for over an hour just as in summer. Rained most of the day yesterday. River all covred with water this morning. Wells and springs full. -- "Who knows whether the final term of progress, in the millions of ages will not bring back the absolute consciousness of the universe, and in that consciousness the awakening of all who have lived. A sleep of a million years is no longer than a sleep of an hour." Renan. It is said that Mongol physicians never ask their patients any questions about their [crossed out: disease] ailments lest they appear to show ignorance in their profession. They feel the pulse in both wrists at the same time.January 16 "By our extreme scrupulousness", says Renan, "in the employment of the means of conviction, by an absolute sincerity and our disinterested love of the pure idea[crossed out: l], we all, who have devoted our lives to science, have founded a new ideal of morality." -- "The great man, or the one hard, religious all things from his things; or the other he masters his trial." Renan. Finished Renan's Life of Jesus to-day. I do not find the figure of Jesus as he is portrayed in these pages very impressive. The book [crossed out: is full of] abounds in noble sentimens and fine thougths, but there is something lacking, something which a more profound and serious nature would have supplied. He does not speak the word which explains the enigma of Christianity, tho' he often raises the hope [crossed out: ???] and expectation that he will speak it. Tihs comes near it "The essential work of Jesus wasthe creation around him of a cirlce of disciples in whom he inspired a boundless attachment, and in whose breast he implanted the germ of his doctrine. his moral type and the impression which he had produced was all that remained of him." Of course the letters of Paul and the synoptic Gospels made Christianity, but what made Paul and how came the [crossed out: ???] Gospels to be written. What was there in this obscure Galilean that caused these things to be said and written about him? They were not said and written of Philo, or Jesus the son of Sirach, or of John the Baptist, or of Appollonius of Tyre, or of St Paul, or of Socrates. Why were these things written of Jesus of Nazareth? He must have been an extraordinary person to begin with; he produced anunique impression. Then the legend of the resurrection [crossed out: done] did the rest. Without this Christianity would never have been heard of. How did this legend begin. Here is the miracle, the mystery of Christianity. St Paul took this up and gave the rationale of the matter and thus furnished the doctrine feet to travel on. But back of all is still the personality of Jesus. He must have assumed a tone of authority and an air of mystery that were very impressive. As Renan says, "The faith, the enthusiasm, the constancy of the first Christian generation[crossed out: s] is explained only by supposing at the beginning of the whole movement a man of colosal proportions."January 17. Snug, uniform winter weather, [crossed out: but] about right every way. No severe cold after the thunder shower of Sunday night. Read the exploit of a Brooklyn man in killing a bull moose in Maine. With his guides, all armed with Winchester rifles, he followed the trail of the moose through 2 feet of snow for six days. They started him from a moose yard near the top of a mountian. As soon as the animal found itself pursued it led right off and hoped to outwalk its enemies. But they had snow shoes and he did not; they had food and he did not. On the 5th day he began to show signs of fatigue, by resting often. He also tried to get aroundbehind his pursuers and let them pass on. On the morning of the 6th day he had made up his mind to travel no further, but to face his enemies and have it out with them. As he heard them approach he rose up from his couch of snow, his [crossed out: main] mane erect, his look determined, and confronted them about 50 yards distant. Poor creature, how my heart went out to him brought to bay there in the snow of those Maine woods. He did not know how unequal the contest was. One thing I devoutly wished, that he too could have been armed with a Winchester rifle and knew how to use it. But before he could use such weapons as he had, two bullets cut him down. And the man brags of his exploit!18 Snowed till after noon. Hail and some rain all night, and most of the day yesterday. Clearing to night. -- M. writes well; he is scholarly and thoughtful but he has not the gift of style, no fresh new quality of mind. His work has nothing to distinguish it from the great mass of scholarly production now turned out on all sides. I do not know [crossed out: as] that Woodberry's or T.S. Perry's has either. The only pickle that will keep these things is just what the schools and the books and professors cannot help you to. Arthur Young in his travels in France in 1787 says, "Who in comon sense would deny a king the amusement of a mistress, provided he did not make a business of his plaything! Paris at that time had no sidewalks or foot pavements as he calls them. Walking was fatiguing anddangerous to men and impossible to a well-dessed woman The bodies of infants used to be put in stays, he says, and are so still in Spain. 20 Myron Benton came to-day at 10 1/2 A.M. Delighted to see him Weather mild. 22. Heavy rain from South pours all day. Much damage and loss of life in some places 23. Bright and warm. Myron leaves to-day. Drives with Mrs B. to P. I go down on noon train to drive back. Ice not very good. Myron and I have had our old talks again. Every moment he was here gave me pleasure How much more life would beto me if I could often have visits from such men as Myron. 24. Warm and clear. Looks like a breaking of old Wwinters reign. 25. Heavy snow, wet and heavy, breaks down some of my hemlocks. Thaws all day, snow stops by noon. 27. Clear, warm, and [crossed out: hazy] smoky, a fly buzzing on the pane. Is the cold indeed over? 30 Rain last night. Bright and warm this morning. Snow still deep. Ice on river covered with water. Feb. 1st Still warm and bright. Feb. 2d Still warm and bright, but cold wave coming. Feel its breath already. -- When I look up at the stars at night I am so overwhelmed sometims that I say to myself we can not only conceive of a being that could do that, but we cannot take the first step toward conceiving him. How puny and insignificant seems the God of the churches. Therefore I say he is the most devout man who says there is no god -- the utmost stretch of [crossed out: ho] whose thought cannot make out one feature or attribute of a being who could put those stars up there. The universeis so stupendous that it crushes any Atlas upon whose shoulders we may place it. There is no God. There is a self existing, self perpetuating universe. This notion of the Heavenly Father who concerns himself about each individual, whence does it come? In life and history there is not the slightest edivence of such a being. The other day out on the plains of Kansas, a poor widow with her three children found the wolf of want at her door. What oculd she do? She would destroy herself and family. The eldest boy aged 12, escaped with his throat partly cut and ran to the neighbors and gave the alarm; but before help could return the house was burnedand the woman and her two little children burned with it. Where was the Heavenly Father then? Barely one such case and there are thousands of them, and worse, every year -- dissipates completely all such notions. If you can survive the clashing and warring and waste of the universe, all right; if not, all right. I heard of an idle fellow convicted of some crime whom the Judge sentencedd to three years in the penitentiary. When sentence was pronounced he exclaimed to the judge in the most pleased and satisfied tones, "All right, Judge, all right."Feb 3. More rain. Cold wave knocked in the head. "Thus it is in revolutions" says Arthur Young who was travelling in France in the early stages of the French Revolution "thus it is, one rascal writes (some preposterous story) and a hundred thousand fools believe." 5. 5 P.M. A solitary robin just flew over and dived down into my hemlocks by the house. Cold this AM. 7 degrees above. 6. The robins sang this morning in a tree near the school-house mild and thawy. 7 Overcast this P.M. thawing. Ice boats all waiting for a breeze, which will not come. I look out on the ice and see a little black speck over towards Hyde Park That is Julian going for the 2,40 train. I hear the train coming; the black speck seems to move faster, but when the train passes it and stops at the station there is a wide strip of ice yet between it and the shore. Then the black speck creeps back. 8 A white world indeed this morning All the trees turned to snow; Even the telegraph wires are long white lines as big as ropes. Snow fall about 6 inches, one of those silent stealthy storms; not a bit of wind or commotion in Nature -- nothing but the falling snow. 14 Rather a pleasant week, but getting colder to-day. No storm since Monday. 15 Sunday; Down to 2 degrees below zero this morning. Bright and clear, and warmer as the day advances. Blue-birds in the air. General Sherman is dead, the lst of our great generals of the war. 16 Rain this A.M. and in the night. Mercury up to near 40 degrees-- When a tree is sick, or killed suddenly, it does not drop its leaves. It seems that it requires strength and vitality for a tree to let go its leaves. It is only the alert and growing mind that can let go its old beliefs and views. 18. Three days of rain clearing this morning. The air full of blue-birds this morning. Saw 12 in one flock s I went to the P.O. They were calling merrily from many points. The blue-birds came north on the crest of the warm wave which was very high farther south -- 74 in Washington, about 45 degrees here.19 Ice boatmen out again to day, and so slow they go that I fancy I can almost hear them curse the laggard wind. Old Boreas! wake up and give them a send off worthy of you. This will pass for a winter of light winds, never remember to have seen a season [crossed out: with] of such gentle breezes. No big blows at all. 25. Warm, threatening rain. Snow and ice melting very fast. Big floods in the west, air full of blue birds and robins. Sap runs fast. Not much cold weather since my last date.Walking in the fields on Monday I noted a phenomenon of the snow that I have never seen referred to -- it was the sound made by the sudden settling of large patches of snow as the foot touched it, a crashing, falling sound that shot away from one, as the cracking of the ice darts away when you walk upon it. Very sudden, very peculiar. It would startle my dog and make him stop and look about. Apparently the warmth had thawed the snow from beneath, and the multitude ofweeds and grasses held it up. On the least jar down it dropped a fraction of an inch making a curious crashing sound.The snow was shallow, only 1 or two inches deep. Where there were no weeds or stubble to hold it up, this phenomenon was not witnessed. 26. Mercury up to 50 yesterday; the ground more than half [crossed out: bear] bare this morning. Cooler to-day. -- If the Earth [crossed out: was] were all covered with water, we [crossed out: would] should then have sea without limits, a boundless ocean, which yet would not be infinite -- limitless but not infinite. This idea is in Prof. Clifford; lecture on "The Aims and instruments of Scientific Thought."1891 Mch 1. A bright day. The edge of a cold wave just reaching us. 2d Mercury down to 2 above this morning, and not above 12 all day. Bright and cutting. 3d Cold iwht light snow falling. Read "Liza" by Turgeneiff. A real experience to read a novel by this geat romancer. The taste of his books is always sweet and good to me. No hair splitting here, no tiresome analysis, all is large, simple, fresh. Sad, probably no sadder than life. 4. Snow last night and to-day about 6 or 7 inches. Real winter agian. The rents and holes in the ice nearly all closed.5th To P. to-day in cutter, wife and I. thaws some in middle of day. Cold wave at night. 6. In cutter over to Rifton to look after cart. Bright and warm, but good sleighing. A pleasant ride. 7. Bright and cool; not quite warm enough for a sap-day. 9 Slow rain becoming heavy by spells at night. 10 Bright day, spring like, good sap day. Snow getting thin. 11 Lovely spring day; clear, still, and warm. Best sap-day yet. Bad head-ache, sat in my chair till 1 am. Prof Lintner, the entomologist, reports this interesting fact, Twenty years ago a scale insect was carelessly brought from Australiaon some plant. It soon spread rapidly to various shrubs and trees, particularly to the orange tree. It spread so rapidly in the orange groves and orchards that many trees were killed and whole orchards abandoned. Every rememdy was tried upon it but in vain. Then Prof Riley bethought him that the insect must have some natural enemy in Australia. Two of his assistants went there and brought back 12000 specimens of parasites, out of these 2 proved the ones they were looking for. They soon checked the scale insect, and finally nearly exterminated it, and the orange culture revived again. This seems to have happened in California. Pests of all kinds seem to be on the increase, but so far mans wit keeps ahead. 12 Presto! what a change. The river a great smooth mirror this morning. The ice slipped away in the night as quickly as the Arab. He began to move a little yesterday afternoon. First sparrow song this morning. How delicious. To my delight and surprise heard over by the station my little sparrow of last year, he with the long silver loop of sound. What would I not give to know just where he passed the winter; and what adventures by flood and field he has had since last fall. But here he is, safe and sound. Of course it is the same bird. I have never before heard a sparrow with that song. Mild and overcast to-day. Rain in afternoon13. Rain and fog. The red shouldered starling yesterday and to-day. 14 Clear, windy, and a cold wave, typical March day. The ice all swept from the river and packed along the eastern shore, up and down as far as one can see a white border of ice, apparently unable to move at all, pinned to the shore Ground more than half bare. Since December I have written the following pieces: 3 for Youths Companion paid 120 dollars 1 McClure's Syndicate 40 1 on Wild Flowers for St. Nicholas 50 1 for Independent 15 1 A Hard Nut 15 1 C. Union, 'Pop. Errors and Delusions' paid 20 1 Analogy 50 1 Points of View 20 1 [crossed out: Logic and Sentiment] 1 Eloquence and Poetry 25 Finished, The Spell of the Past 50 405 dollars17 Clear and sharp, a day like cut-glass; hardly a film in the sky, below freezing all day in the shade; too cold for sap. Helped "Zeke" haul the lumber for the crates over from the depot in the afternoon. Highland burned up last night. Yesterday (Monday) fair and cool. 18 Warmer, good sap day. Go to P and stop in H. to see the ruins of the fire. Roads dry much of the way. 19. Overcast. Wind from East. Burn brush all day. Enjoy it much. Saw first phoebe bird, silent. 20. Still overcast with East wind. Storm approaching. Burn brush again. "Zeke" and Acker putting ashes on grapes and raspberries. Temperature at freezing. 23d Monday. The fifth day of east wind; light rains. Warm and spring like to-day. Mercury up to 60 degrees. Meadow-lark and high hole to-day. Oh, how good their calls sound coming up from the fields. To-night the first peepers. Oh how good they sound too. Overcast with a glimpse of the sun a few times. Hauling stone and moving earth from under the shed. 24. Overcast, mild, still. Bees out. Elting Krum buried to-day from the little church, a young man without blame, consumption, age 26. 25. Bright lovely day. Go to Highland to the Rogers auction. Road very bad in places. Saw crocuses in bloom 26 Bright, dazzling, with keen cutting wind from the north; froze in middle of day fear snow. Ice all gone some days and boats again running. Sterling here helping about the crates. Turtle dove to-dayMch 29. A week of dry cold north wind, no rain or snow in this section. Ground getting dry. The last snow bank gone, except in the woods. A terrible rumpus in the house again, all about nothing, simply nothing. The spontaneous combustion of Mrs B's temper. 30 A marvellous day, all sun and sky, north wind, ground nearly ready for the plow. A day to burn up the rubbish, for the spring purification by fire. Mrs B. still on the rampage. We have tongue three a day, and for lunch too. A few night ago she called me a villain and a rascal, and I have left her be[crossed out:a]d, and ought to leave her board also. Never was such a temper in a woman before31. Cool, overcast in afternoon getting dry. Clucking frogs began two or three days ago. [crossed out: Toads] Mr Toad is on the road. Mrs B. on the rampage. I left the table this morning when half through breakfast, not to return till there is a change. I can live in the woods on a crust if need be. April 1st A white wash of snow last night, all gone now at 10 A.M. Promises to be a fair day, tho' a chilly air. Mrs B. left yesterday not yet back. Where is she? 3 My 54th birth day. Eight inches of snow fell last night, nearly all gone to-night. Worked most of the day in the horse stable with DuBois. A terrible row in the house over poor Mrs Fletchers letters. A sad and gloomy day to meSaw an angle worm this morning crawling on the top of the snow. It was then snowing quite hard, the snow wet and heavy. Health good, or would be if I could be allowed to eat my food in peace. 4 Squally day. Snow on the ground in many places The peepers do not stop for the snow. Hepaticas to-day gathered by the boys near H. 6. The farms on the Fishkill mts. still white with snow. Hepaticas in the woods here. Ground nearly dry again. Chilly winds and frost at night. A shrike in the Hibbard orchard I observed him for nearly halfan hour. I have rarely seen a bird sit so long in one place. It was the loggerhead -- dull and ashen gray with black wings. He squealed and warbled and called and whistled and was silent. He allowed me to apprach within 20 or 25 feet of him and stand and observe him. He regarded me as he might a cow or horse. Even my dog, "Dan" was attracted by his medley of notes. I recognized but one familiar note, or notes, certain one of the cat-bird I left him in the tree and came away. His head followed very significantly a little bird that flew over him.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: April 8, 1891 - December 29, 1891
Text: From April 8th 1891 to Jany 1st 1892 April 8. Much shocked this morning to find out new station and post office burned to ashes. A great calamity to the neighborhood Weather continues bright, dry and cold; freezes the ground hard every night; the furnace takes the same am't of coal as in winter. So far spring has been cold, no warmth at all yet: only one day up to 60 degrees. Plowed the garden yesterday. Owing to some peculiarity of the sunlight, or to the position of the sun I can now...
Show moreFrom April 8th 1891 to Jany 1st 1892 April 8. Much shocked this morning to find out new station and post office burned to ashes. A great calamity to the neighborhood Weather continues bright, dry and cold; freezes the ground hard every night; the furnace takes the same am't of coal as in winter. So far spring has been cold, no warmth at all yet: only one day up to 60 degrees. Plowed the garden yesterday. Owing to some peculiarity of the sunlight, or to the position of the sun I can now at 8 am see the great body of the river slide along. It is rarely that the movement of the water can be seen. 1[crosed out: 0]1 Slow rain from South, and a little more warmth.-- The saying of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven is within you if it means anything means that the kingdom of heaven is a subjective condition and not an objective reality, a state of the mind and spirit and not a place to which we are to migrate when we die. His other saying also that my kingdom is not of this world is to the same effect -- not of the world is to the same effect; not of sense and objective reality, but of the world of spirit, of inward experience and attraction. Are not these things real then, only shadows? Real as mind is real, as ideality is real, as love is real, but they do not exist apart from us and independent of us. When the last man perishes, they are no more. When the last manperishes God is no more, as he is something projected by the spirit of man, something supplied for the mind finally to rest upon. To explain the enigma of the universe we must suppose a cause from which it all starts, otherwise life is like a pair of stairs that begin and end in the air. 13. Very lovelyday getting warm; drive to P. and to A Rhodes for peach trees, the stir of work beginning on the farms and in the vineyards along the road. The plough going here and there the grass greening [crossed out: on] in the richer and moister places. Just before reaching Highland meet two ladies in a buggy, the face of one haunts me like a dream Somewhere in life I have looked into that strong sympathetic face. It turns out to be Miss Peck from Northhampton (Smith College) whose acquaintance five years ago this april. She is on her way to see me, and this is the only sight we have of each other. 14 Julians birth day, a perfectly delicious april day, mercury up to 75 at last, air vapory and hazy soft, wooing. Every heart expands. I drive up to Esopus in the morning, and then up to Ulster Park in the afternoon. How delicious everything is. The long-drawn tr-r-r-r-r-r of the toad is heard in the land, a most soothing and welcome sound no bird voice more so. Turtle doves courting along the road; the male flies with a peculiar flapping motion of the wings, and then sails toward the female. How conspicuous the motion of the wings, and then sails toward the female. How conspicuous the red patch on the shoulder of the starling as I drive along. He uncovers it and parades it on such a day. What sudden rushes and outbursts among the robins these days, such spuealing, shouting, and flutter of wings [crossed out: as] three or four of them rush pellmell across the lawn and into the evergreens. The matches are being made and sealed now. The males have been [crossed out: sparring] engaged in that curious peripatetic fencing and sparring for several days. 17 Matchless april days, warm, clear, dry. The bud all swelling, and every heart swelling also. Wind-flower to-day, arbutus in the woods. Shad in the river, birds building their nests, and I setting out the peach trees. The high-holes long repeated welcome note comes up from the fields.19 April fairly outdoing herself. Days like a benediction; all things are blessed. Warm (from 75 to 80 degrees) still, with a milky film in the air. All things rejoice. The farmer can find nothing to grumble about. A slow long continuted thunder shower last night. This morning the grass seems to have grown an inch or more. There is a mist of foliage on the elms, the willows, currant bushes, lilacs, and tamaracks, and on other trees the buds are bursting. Is this smoke in the air or is it the warmth the breath of spring taking visible shape? How vivid the rye fields show here and there! Sat a long time this morningwatching the flights and rivalries ofthe blue-birds. Two males lay upon the ground in a squabble for nearly two minutes. Then the femals went at it and faught with equal desperation. The swallow yesterday, the house wren to-day. 20 These days are a wonder and a delight. Clear, warm, exhilarating. Grape buds starting before we can get the vnes tied up. Currants shaking out their stems nearly ready to bloom. Maples ditto. Julian painting his boat and fixing his net ready for fishing or "scapping". Yesterday in my walk I sat down in the woods and said there is nothing in the woods. Then I lifted up my eyes and behold a crows nest on a hemlock. In amoment or two the water thrush chipped smartly and came and alighted on a branch above me. His chip is like the click of two stones struck smartly together in the water. I noted the curious tertiary motion of this body from which he has got the name of wagtail. The motion is not a wag, it is like the motion of a conductors baton. The bird seems to be beating time for some invisible orchestra. It is a soft, gentle, graceful motion up and down. 22 Warm, dry, summer heat, and a summer thunder shower at 6 P.M. fell about 1/2 inch water. Finished Dr Nansens "The First Crossing of Greenland"an honest, vivid, delightful work. A real bit of experience, even to read it. The book is pervaded by an admirable spirit; a book of travel I shall long remember. That inland ice -- the last great remnant of the old ice age, can not easily be forgotten. Such pictures of the Esquimo are also novel and refreshing. 27. Enchanting April days. Cherry and plumb trees in bloom since Saturday the 25th. A light frost yesterday morning. A [crossed out: ye] mist of yellowish green over all the trees. A drive to Sherwoods yesterday P.M. Very beautiful. S. had a lot of young lambs; how good they looked to me. The swamps and water courses along the way yellow with marsh marigolds.Now at 11 A.M. a fitful wind starts up from the S.W. and comes to my nostrils laden with the perfume of cherry blossoms, a delicious bitter-sweet or almond scent. I never remember it so noticable. Standing under the tree if pours down upon you. Clear, warm, a film in the air. The perfection of shad time, and plow time. A writer in Forest and S. says he has seen a white birch cut off by a beaver in such a position that the tree could not fall. It stood perfectly sraight in the snow. Then the beaver cut it again, with the same result. He cut it four time and the four sticks stood straight side by side. The beaver must have thought the tree bewitched. Howdoes the beaver make the wood sink that he lays up for his winter food? It is said he does it by sucking the air out of its pores and letting the water in. I doubt this. 29. Bright cool and dry. The river this morning dances and sparkles like a thing of life. Pear and peach trees in bloom. Kingbird came two days ago. May 1st A warm, soft, smoky almost voluptuous day, clad in the white and pink of the fruit blossoms, and the tender green of the young leaves. A day like a dream. Cat bird, wood thrush, orchard starling and a cuckoo here, and several warblers A visit from Douglas Sladen a harty, modest handsome young English author and poet, an Oxford manLooks like Gilder, an English Gilder. Has lived in Australia and been to China and Japan. We have a long talk and then a walk to the woods and gather many wild flowers. We ate our dinner alone, but ate it in peace. His visit did me good, and made me forget for a few hours the domestic furies that beset my way. 5 Our brief summer is followed by a young winter. Frost night before last and still more severe frost last night. Formed ice like a window pane. Apple and pear trees in bloom since last week. Grape vines showing the fruit buds; fear for the currants and cherries. 6 Cold continues; severe all over the country, snow in someplaces, a little spit of snow here this morning. As it was over cast all night, frost was not so severe. My early potatoes badly cut by frost of Monday night. Maples in full leaf. Season about as forward as 5 years ago, but this cold is a set back. Fear more frost to-night. 8. The cold spell spent itself yesterday. To-day warm and genial. But little damage seems to have been done here by the frost after all our scare. A few grapge sprouts wilted on lower edge of vineyard. Apple trees full of warblers in the morning. The row-jaw in the house continues.9 Go to Roxbury to-day. Walk up to Curtises with a big shad in my arms. The day warm and lovely. No foliage yet on the mountains, very glad to see Curtis and like his place much. 10 We go over to the old home. It is hot. The old place green and fresh, but dilapidated. George is doing all that can be done. Mariah with a babe 2 weeks old, repeating the life of her grandmother of 50 or 60 years ago. Abigail is there, and Ursula, Janes girl. In afternoon I walk up through the woods, and up to the old Clump. Again the old landscape o'er; then down through the woods to Curtise's house just at sunset;The peace and beauty of the fields and hills were very soothing. Monday, the 11th, I go fishing up Montgomery Hollow, an old haunt of my boyhood. Take a fine string, nine of them from 9 to 10 1/2 inches. Return to Curtises at one P.M. In aternoon go over to the old Home again and walk about the fields. 12 To day go out to see Jane and Homer. The latter very feeble, trembling like an aspen leaf. He is near his end, shaking palsy. Jane was papering her bed room and was well. In afternoon I go on to Edens at Hobar; all well. Hiram there and rather silent. Wednesday the 13. Willie and I gofishing, but poor luck; too bright and cold. Home by afternoon train. 16 Rain last night and this morning. Start for Jersey. Meet Mr. Fernn the artist in N.Y; and then to Pt. Pleasant. 17 Sunday. Go up the Manasquon river with Fenn to Allair. A cold windy day. Many pleasant views, back at night. 18 Spend forenoon on the beach with Fenn, a good time. Back to N.Y. in afternoon. 19 Home this morning. Still dry. The rain did not amount to much. 24. Sunday still dry. To Sherwoods to-day to see Marsh hawks nest. Five eggs in it, a pleasant day.27. Cool and dry, dry. Grape vine shoots from 1 to 2 feet long. Rain much needed. No rain this month to wet the ground. It is 17 years this day since Chancy B. died. We finish spraying the grapes the 2nd time. 28 Go to H. Dry and warm. 29 A slow rain all the forenoon. Need ten times as much; freshens the grass a little. 30. Cloud and mist in the morning. Pretty warm. The clouds seem to want to rain but there is no will or purpose in them they look soft and irresolute, mere masses of fog. Wind S.W.Decoration Day; I ought to be at the graves of my dead, but here I am pottering about home. Go to Ulster Park in forenoon. 31. The last May day, warm and bright and motionless. at 3 PM I sit here in summer house facing the posished river. A thunder cloud rises up in the east about over Myron Bentons and pours down rain. Its upper, great vague mother cloud pushes out far in this direction. I hear mutterings of the thunder. Well, there is comfort in knowing it can rain and can thunder. The scent of the honey locust heavy upon the air. In the woods over the river the locusts make whitish patches amid the vivid green. The scent of white clover also upon the air. A sloop driftsby on the glassy surface. The passing train is doubled by the mirror of the river. Birds just beginning to peck the half ripe cherries. No grape bloom yet. -- The religious mind is necessarily subjective like the artistic or literary type of mind. The scientific mind is necessarily objective. The objects of science are real; the hopes, aspirations, certitudes of religion are real to the mind that experiences them but they are not true, as the facts and deductions of science are true; that is, they have no objective reality. Pauls light and voice from Heaven and his conversio, were [crossed out: ???] real to him, it was a subjective experience but had no objective reality like the facts of science; that is thevoice and the light had no existence apart from Pauls emotional nature. The trouble the Church has with the unbeliever is when out of its subjective experience, it formulates a creed, when it seeks to give objective reality to the objects of its adoration etc. June 1st Warm, with a milky tinge in the air. Light showers in afternoon, seems unable to really get to raining. But it has made a beginning. 4 Terrible thunder shower last night from 8 to 9 1/2 The heaviest rain fall I ever saw in this place; probably 4 inches of water; [crossed out: done] did irreparable injury to my vineyards; tons and tons of soil carried awaythe thirsty earth could do nothing with such a deluge. A night of agony to me, slept barely an hour; after the rain the wind arose and I feared the young arms would all be stripped off the vines; wind continues to-day and the havoc with the arms is very great; some vines lose half. The worst blow I have yet had. I fear the vineyards will prove the death of me yet. Blessed is the man who has nothing. 9 Lovely June days, calm warm, hazy. Clover and daisies and wild strawberries in the meadows. Young birds calling early grapes just blooming, cherries ripening. It only needs youthto make the world very beautiful and winsome. Busy carting earth to repair damages done by the deluge, make but slow headway. Finished our 3d spraying this am. 14 Sunday. The past week clear and dry and pretty warm. On Friday P.M Julian and I go over to Sherwoods and spend the night and Saturday, fish, pick wild strawberries, and lounge about. Visit the hawks in the swamp. An interesting sight. A delicious bath in the lake Cherries ripe: first mess of peas to-day, grapes nearly done blooming, weather very favorable for grapes. Thermometer to-day about 86. No rain since the deluge of the 3d. 15. Very warm, 90, and dry, not a cloud. 16 Still hotter, 94 in the shade 92 on north end of my house, showers in the distance in afternoon: cooler at night. In morning while in the cherry tree picking cherries I see a stranger approach mopping his face with his handkerchief. In a quiet way he tells me he was a school mate of mine at Ashland 37 years ago and that his name is DeWitt. I come down and we go to the summer house and talk the matter over. I do not remember him. Says he was in the Logic class with me. He proves an agreeable and intellgent man a farmer, has kept track of me through the public prints etc.Spends the day with me and we have pleasant talk, looks at the Mulford farm with view of purchasing etc. Am glad he came; it is a ripple in my monotonous life. At night he goes to Catskill on the train. -- In Central Asia near the river Oxus there is, according to travelers a famous rock called the Lamp Rock, from a strange light that seems to issue from a cavern far up in the side of the rock. The natives have a superstitious fear of the rock and ascribe the light to some dragon or demon that lives in the cave. Recently a bold English traveler climbed up the rock and investigated. The light was found after all to be only the light of common day The cave was only a tunnel, and the mysterious light came through the rock from the other side, making a striking glow or nimbus at the mouth of the dark cavern. Nearly all our provinces and mysteries will clear up in the same way if explored. There is no light more mysterious than the light of common day. 18 Quite a rain last night, and slow rain and drizzle all day to-day, and very cool. The first rainy day since early in April. 19 Still cool and rainy, tho' not much water has fallen as yet.23 Light rain the past week. Several days of cloud and drizzle. Cleared off yesterday which was hot and muggy. Began shipping currants to-day, a cool clear, lovely June day from the north 24 Still clear and cool 25. Currants half off to-day. A hot wave arrives in afternoon. 26 Hot again, with cool waves at night. 27 Cool, clear and very windy; finished the new currant patch to-day. 2400 lbs of Fay. 28 Sunday. Still clear, cool and windy. 29 and 30 Pleasant June days. July 1st Cool and pleasant. Currants nearly all off. 2d [crossed out: H] Light rain till P.M from S.E. Not nearly enough rain. 3d Over cast from S.W. but no rain. 4 Light shower last night very cool to day, with shadow and sunshine. A dull fourth for me. Plant a little corn and read and loaf. As I write this the young hawk is on my lap picking at my buttons. 5 Very cool, with masses of black and gray clouds. A little grape rot discovered the past week in Niagaras, Concords, and Champions. Yesterday Julian, van Benschoten, Ethel and I went to see what van thought was a cuckoos nest in Gordons orchard. We filed along wading through the timothy grass waist-deep to an appleamid the alders and bushes besdie the little brood. brook? There on a limb, ten feet from the ground was the nest, a large loose mass of twigs. I saw at once it [crossed out: did] was not a cuckoos nest and thought of the turtle dove. A little scrutiny showed it was not that either. Rising up from the twigs we saw a mass of blue-gray down surmounted by three heads, all pointing in different directions. Then we saw the three necks, then the yellowish bills and curious eyes. It was the nest of the little green heron or shitepoke. We each by turns climbed up in the tree and had a nearer look. It was a curious spectacle. The young sat there motionless like little sphynxes. Van said they had a froggy look, and that he had seen that eye in the human countenance.10 An ideal summer day, cool brilliant, placid, sky very blue, clouds stately and innocent-looking. Cool all the week, [crossed out: not] the mercury has not reached 80 this month as yet. Finished spraying vineyard on the 8th. I work a little, read a little and loaf a good deal. Health good, but spirits dull. This P.M Mr. Mason and friend drop in on me in my summer house and do me world of good. They make me see and feel my want of some one to talk to and what a tonic it is. It lifts the dull weight of prose of my days here in this wilderness among these philistines a good deal. I find the hawk a help too, for all Mrs. B's tirades against such folly as she calls it. Try to read "God and His World" by Aldine, but am disappointed in it. It is a kind of echo of Mulford's "Republic of God" a really noble and beautiful book that has a hold on the future. "God and His World" is nothing as science or logic, and it is feeble as literature or religion. The old religious jargon is there, and not much new life or meaning has been put into it. 11 Warmer to-day with more haze and southerly winds. Mental skies suddenly all gloom, and life hardly worth living. 13 Warm and dry, A pleasant afternoon in the woods by the falls with Julian and three bright young ladies from Mrs. F's 14 Very hot, 90. 15 The middle of summer, hot and dry [crossed out: that] till one P.M. when a sudden shower comes upfollowed by a series of showers, or else many installments of one shower. It is now nearly three and the rain is still pouring, more than one inch of water has fallen. Twice it seemed done and then thickened again in the west, the thunder rolled and down came the rain. It was much needed. Streams and springs very low, and ground very hard. Ploughing the vineyard but find the soil very hard. This will soften it up, and may be also start the grape rot which seems to have stopped. Except the deluge of June 3 no such rain as this since early spring. -- The rain proved almost anideal one; heavy, to the verge of washing the vineyard, nearly 2 hours, about 2 inches of water; just enough 17. Cool and delightful. 19 Sunday. More rain last night and in afternoon, about an inch of water. To-day bright and charming day. I drive down the road looking for my dog Dan, but get no clew of him. 21. Cool and beautiful, finished spraying for the 5th time to-day. 23 Go to Onteora Park to-day. Reach there about 10 A.M. Johnson comes in the afternoon Very pleasant life in the camp of Mrs Wheeler. J and I sleep in a big tent. We take most of our meals at the inn. I meet here many people whom I shall not soon forget, mostly women. We are dined and wined and driven about and walked for 6 days. Sleep very poor. Miss Taylors trouble weighs me down. Saturday we drive to the Platterkill Clove. Monday to the mountain house. The scene here is a great surprise. You drive swiftly along a good road up an easy grade till you alight in the rear of a great Hotel. You walk straight through the hall and there lies the world below you as if seen from a balloon. [crossed out: The y] A young lady walked by my side, a Miss Watterson, a N.Y. journalist. Aftera moment I turn to her to make some remark and find her in tears. The grandeur and unexpectedness of the scene had overcome her. She wept like a child. I could hardly keep my own tears back, which an inward grief of my own had for days been brewing. We walked away from the rest and sat down on the brink of the precipice and gazed upon the wonderful panorama. I felt tenderly toward that girl during the rest of my stay, and think she did toward me. The night before I came away she found me in the sitting room and lead me one side, told me she was to be married in Sept; and was coming up to Onteora for a few weeks and would be so happy if I would come too. She pressed and stroked my hand and clung to it till I promised. She is a tender and true woman. On Tuesday we went to the top of Round Top over 4000 feet. It was like a view from the clouds11 Very hot, from 90 degrees to 95; been growing hotter and hotter for several days; grape rot pretty bad. Early grapes nearly ripe; have to seek refuge from the heat on the floor in lower hall. Very well these days, but sad 13 The heated term broken yesterday by a fine shower. Very bright and beautiful and cool to-day. 16 Eventless days, lovely, not too hot. To-day particularly fine and cool, after the light rain of yesterday morning. The white fleecy clouds float indolently across the sky. How my thoughts follow them! The land very green the river placid. -- It seems as if God must be blind and deaf and halt and lame, all he does is brought about withso much blundering; so much groping, such waste and failures. Every step forward of the race is at an enormous cost and after many failures. The grape vine reaching out blindly for support, feeling here and there, exploring all the surrounding for something to cling to, clinging to itself, to anything its tendrils touch[crossed out: es], is a type of all the efforts of man toward bettering his condition. In science in invention he simply gropes; there are more failures than successes. In Nature the same groping and experimenting goes on. Lowell died a few days ago. His death gives me a pang I owe him little, yet he was one of the men who help adorn life. He had no message for me, yet he spoke brave and stirring words for the country and for the higher life. The first and only time I ever saw him was in N.Y. [crossed out: in the] in April 1887 I thinkf first in the Century office, where he was very cordial and complimentary, and then [crossed out: to] at Walt Whitmans lecture in the evening. He and Norton and Gilder and his wife and I sat in the same box. The only service I ever did was to hand him his hat on that occasion. 27. The weather for a week or more past has been very diagreeable -- muggy, hot and infernal, some grapes cracked badly. Well and very busy. There is nothing drives the fumes away like brisk occupation, It clears the air like a breeze. Outlook for grapes better than at first. First Delawares August 20.Oct 15. A big break in the record of my days. Very busy with the grapes till Sept 20. A fine season for shipping, for the most part. Sept. dry and fine. Shipped 21 tons, over 4 tons Del, over 4 tons Niagaras, 5 tons and over of Wordens, nearly 5 of Concords, etc. Brought 2100 dollars. Shipped mostly to Boston. Am convinced that small baskets pay best. In future, keep clear of N.Y. market. Keep clear of Durling and Fredericks, and beware Bishop and H. In Boston C.E. Morrison and Co. did best. R and H, and E and E about equal. Last half of September very warm, nothing like it since the fall of '79, mercury up to 90 manydays. In Wis. and Mich. from 90 to 100. Sept 24 we all went out to Curtis's The first ten days still hot and delightful. Enjoy myself much. Could see half a township from my window. Gain 7 1/2 pounds in 10 days. Julian fishes for chubs, threading the old streams of my boyhood. I loaf and take my ease. Amid these hills I have a feeling of being sheltered that I have no where else. What is it? The people of my youth are mostly gone, but there is in some way a background of association in the mere topography and geography that shuts out the great void.Surely I ought to go back there to live. A change in the weather came about Oct 4 or 5th with rain, and a severe cold snap on Sunday night the 10th. On Saturday we went over to Jones B. One brilliant day I went up to Old Clump. On the 13th we came back home and surrendered ourselves up again to the domestic furies and imps. One bright afternoon I went down across the hill to Uriah Bartrams. Uriah is 83 years old. He looks more pale and worn than I had ever before seen him. He seemed very restless and frequently sighed deep and long or uttered some half articulate exclamation. Evidently his days are vacant and he feels theend is near. I got him to talking of old times, and again heard the old names I so often had heard from father's lips, Martin Lyon, Sheebe Rundall, Tim, Rundall, Lewis Bouton, Zeke Preston, etc. Martin Lyon lived on the Jerry Bouton farm there in the orchard by the tanzy. Nat Bouton used to live up in our field above the sap-bush 19 Weather dry and cool. No frost yet to affect the foliage. 20 Heavy rain, with thunder in afternoon. Rain began last night. 29 Cool and dry. The hardest frost last night of the season. Wells and springs very low. Two inches of rain the 20th did not affect the water supply. Eventless(days?) with incessant rattle of an abusive tongue in the house. Paused ashile this morning in returning from P.O. to see the stems of the leaves of the ash fall. The leaves were off some days ago, and this morning the stems were falling in the still air, coming down swiftly one by one. Clear this P.M. with southerly winds. Getting warmer. Oct 31. The last day of a golden October, warm, 62 degrees southerly winds, partly clear, leaves covering the ground. Nov 1st Cool and dry, partly overast, air full of smoke, clouds blue and dry looking; trees more than half stripped of their leaves, cold wave approaching. 2d Light frost last night; cool clear and dry this morning It seems to me that life never had fewer attractions for me than it has now. 3 Election day. Clear and sharp, growing cold all day. Not a cloud to be seen, very dry. 4. Mercury down to 20 degrees this morning, the coldest of the season. Still clear, with north wind. 6. Still clear and sharp, no cloud, no rain. Walk up to Terpennings for butter in afternoon. Pause in the cemetary on my return. Already the names of so many people here who I knew, quite a throng of them. I linger long about their graves. Considerwhether or not I want to be buried here. The old Baptist burying ground at home is offensive to me. So is this. No kith or kin of mine are here. Had rather be burried beside my dogs, or else in one of the old fields at home. 7. Cold and clear still. Every storm that starts from the West comes to naught before it reaches us Several degrees below freezing every night. A water famine threatened in Eastern states. Some of the pine trees just shedding their leaves. Some seasons they shed them in August. Noticed in Sept. The woodpeckers drilling their rings of small holes in the bark of the apple trees; found some of the holes filled with gummy like exudation. The birds are feeding upon the tree and not upon insects. Think they usually make these holes in the fall. Of course insects are not distributed with such regularity and in exact rows under the bark. There are no insects in live bark, any way. The woodpeckers eat this gum and sap, or else the soft inner bark of the tree. 27 Since my last entry, the weather here on the whole, has been mild; only once down to 20 degrees. Several rains from S.W. Enough to affect the wells and springs. The water famine relieved nearly all over the country. Quite a streak of mental activity a few days ago, but nothing valuable came of it, as it was mainly misdirected. But it revives my hopes. Yesterday, Thanksgiving I went to N.Y. with Anthony Gill to see a football match between PrincetonYale. The spectacle fills my minds eye yet; The great well-dressed, well-behaved crowd -- 35000 people, mostly all young, the flutter of flags and colors, the cheering and horning, and a glamour of romance or sentiment in some way about the college youths struggling there against each other. Alas, that I have no college association. It is a great loss. A gray day with slow rain after 3 o'clock. Got back home at 11 1/2 P.M. Sunshine to-day with flying clouds. Weather acts rather jerky. Sudden changes -- feebleness? Doubt if we have a severe winter. Nov. 30 A big cold wave, mercury down to 6 above this morning. Snow on the mountians and on the cars that come from the1891 North and West. Dec 1. Bright day but sharp, mercury at 20 this morning 2. Milder, clear and lovely. Go to P. in P.M. boat. 3. Still bright and warmer, no wind. Much haze, late Indian summer I do not see mind in Nature. Mind is human, and in Nature we see the unhuman, or not human. We see the raw material of mind, as it were; we make mind out of it. A bird sings; its song is not music, but music can be made out of it. Or is calls, and we say it says this word or that word, but it only suggests the word. When we try to imitate it we say the word. The intelligenceof Nature is like that. It is inseparably mixed with that which is not intelligence. There is no morality, no virtue in Nature. Nature is non-moral. Nature is not inhuman, but non-human. Nature is conscious of herself in man alone. When I see a boat going by on the river I see something that looks like design or conscious intelligence, but when I see the river itself going by to the see sea, I am impressed quite differently. There is no kinship between the two facts. If there is mind in nature, it is blind, it can not see the way, but feels for it and experiments endlessly. The law of variation is this groping of nature. She will hit the mark because she will each time vary the direction. [crossed ou: It is] The progress of Nature in her lower or her higher forms is precisely like a lost dog trying to find his way home; it tries all directions, and finally hits on the right one. Or it is like the grape vine in the vineyard. See how it reaches out its arms in every direction feeling for support. It will cling to anything it touches, friend or foe, it will cling to itself just as eagerly as to the trellis. The progress of the race has been like this, endless failures and then by and by the lucky hit. The forces of Nature have literally fought themselves into their present equilibrium. The incomprehensible thing is Life, this something we call life which builds up these structure before our eyes by a process which we cannot imitate or [crossed out: institute] initiate.3d In P.M. Julian and I take a turn through the woods back of Irishman Rileys; see 3 grouse and 1 gray squirrel. An interesting tramp, air so still one could have carried a lighted candle. 5. A cyclone passed north and west of us yesterday; heavy winds and rain in afternoon, becoming very violent in early evening. Clear to-day and mild; bees out the hive; still looks like open winter. Storms are going north of us. 10 A morning like Oct. or Early Nov. Clear, still, mild, only a little frost last night. A very mild and lovely Dec. so far On Monday the 7th, came Adelbert Allaben, an old friend and student of mine at Polo, Ills, 35 years ago. Now Congregational minister; rather a fine fellow. Brought a big bunch of M.S. to read to me, a novel, called "Old Chronicle." On the whole a powerful story, think it will be a success maybe a great success. It is written under pretty high pressure and has in it. Lacks humor, and probably lacks charm. This last is peculiarly the gift of the man, if there is not something winsome and attractive about him as a person, [crossed out: and] charm will not attach to his book or discourse. My pleasure in his visit much marred by Mrs B's shrewish temper and inhospitality."He who knows how to lead well" says Plutarch, "is sure to be well followed." My honey bees humming in the air to-day. This hum of the bee in Dec. often proves the requiem of winter. We will see if it proves so this time. 11. Still mild and delightful. Only a mild frost last night. About 10 1/2 Mr Booth and Mr Lown of P. appear with their haversacks over their shoulders and we presently start off for a tramp and a Dec picnic. Back through the woods by Irishman Rileys and to the Old Mill by black creek. Here we have our lunch. [crossed out: An] A fire of dry sticks make us at home. Here we spend the hours with much talk, the fire more for sociabilitythan warmth. Then back through Brookmans woods home. Mr Booth has an eye for Indian relics. Mr Lown is a botanist. Coming through an open field, Mr. [crossed out Lown] Booth? suddenly turned sharply to one side like a dog when he scents game. He went a few rods and picked up a stone that proved to be an Indian pounding stone. The two dimples or thumb and finger indentations on each side were very plain, and it showed use. "Did you really smell that stone" I asked. "No" said he, "I saw a stone there. I kicked it over, and it was not what I wanted but just by it lay this, the one I did want" 13. Indian summer weather still. Froze but little last night. The moon was nearly full and what a night it was. Roads dry and hard and white. Fields dry, streams and springs low forthis time of year. This morning is like Oct. or Early Nov. nearly clear with light S.W. wind Prof. DuBois's article on Immortality in last Century seems pretty conclusive. It is very ingenious and does not assume the points to be proven. Yet why does it not produce conviction in me? Surely not because I do not want to be convinced. Is it not because one cannot conceive of the things after it is proven? Life and consciousness without the body, without limitations of time and space. It is unthinkable and therefore incredible. We cannot sum up nature, we cannot say it is all for this or for that, we cannot say it is all a failure unless man is immortal. We think in straight lines, so to speak, from point to point, but the universe is symbolized by the circle or the sphere. We think Nature must have had a beginning and must have an end, that it must have had a creator, but when we look deeper we see this is not true; the sphere comes to our aid and we see how we cannot set bounds to creation. I am convinced there are no terms by which we can express the truth of these things. Creation is infinite and we cannot prescribe its end or its bounds without contradiction. It is too large for the mind to grasp. What is life for? Well, whom then is immortality for? Now at 2 P.M. not a cloud, mercury at 60, bees humming like Sept. Dec. 14 Bees still humming. Some [crossed out: lay] lazy, slow moving clouds; a light rain said to be coming from the West. Columns of smoke here and there. River unruffled. 16 Light rain yesterday and last night. Windy and colder to-day with sunshine. To a lady correspondent who asked doubtfully about my faith, I replied: "My faith is not like yours. The man never has as much faith as the woman. He must find his way step by step and in the light of reason. She leaps or flies and is there before him. I think God meant that a man should earn his faith by the sweat of his brow, by toil and struggle, and often may be, go without it entirely. I have not earned mine yet, tho' the sort of vague blind faith of my little poem "Waiting" I have and have always had, because it seems to be a law of nature. What is mine, what belongs to me by my constitution I shall get. I shall find it, or it will find me."19 Bright mild day. Walk up from P. on R.R. a cold wave since last entry, but not severe. Mercury down to 14 two days ago. A little floating ice this morning for the first 20. A sharp, frosty morning, tho' not very cold, day hazy and still. River like a mirror. Sun shines through smoke and thin clouds. Skating on the ponds for 3 days past. The 11th anniversary of mothers death. Gave some magic lantern views last evening over at the rooms of the new society. 21 Off to Roxbury this morning. Day proves to be very fine, not a cloud in the sky and temperature mild. Take dinner with sister Abigail. Meet Curtis in the street. Go up home with him and spend the night. Old Mrs Grand then gone a long way down the hill of life since I saw her last, 81, not much longer has she to stay, a very bad cough, the consumption of old age; reminds me of her father Uncle Krum. 22 Go up and settle with George this morning. Cloudy to-day. The old home looks very forlorn. 23 Down to the station in a slow rain, warm, and take train out to see Homer and Jane once more. See Homer iand Jane once more. See Homer in a milk wagon with another man and know him at a distance. He shakes like a man of 90. He jumps out the wagon and greets me, voice feeble and whining. I go up with him. He sits behind and amid the empty milk cans. I sit in seat with the driver; he goes like Jehu and I fear H. will be bounced to death or thrown out over the rough road. You fool! why drive this way! I speak and he slows up. Jane glad to see me getting stout. Take dinner with them and then back to the train at 2 P.M. and so back to W.P. at night, with plan to take train in the morning for Camden, where Walt Whitman is sick unto death, the papers say. 24. Go to Camden to-day; reach there about 3 in a pouring rain, but the sun presently comes out. Find Walt still alive. Dr. Bucke and George W. are there. go up to his room. Such litter, such an accumulation of dust and dirt, such disorder! Piles of papers, books, and every thing else. Walt lies on a broad dirty bed with eyes closed. But he knows me and speaks my name as of old and kisses me. He asks me to sit beside him a while. I do so holding his hand. He coughs feebly and raises a great deal of phlegm. Asks about my family and sends his "best" love to wife and Julian. Gives me two copies of his complete poems, just out. He tells me where to find them. After a while I go out for fear of fatiguing him. He says "it is all right John," evidently referring to hisapproaching end. He said his brother George had just been in and "has quite unnerved me, for the first time." 25 Xmas. Expected to find Walt dead this morning, but he is not, and rallied considerably during the day. I see him again and he speaks of Mrs O'Conner, of Eldridge and his wife etc. His voice is natural and strong; looks much better than yesterday. I dined at Harneds and spend evening there. A murky foggy day. 26 Walt had a bad night, doctors think he may live a day or two yet, or may go any hour. I go up and look athim long and long, but do not speak. His face has steadily refined; no decrepitude or breaking down never saw the nose so beautiful. He looks pathetic, but how beautiful! At 11 I take a silent farewell, and leave; reach home at night. How green the patches of witner grain were in New Jersey! 28. Monday. Warm and clear, lovely day. Walt little better. 29. S.W. wind and rain in afternoon and evening. Walt still better, so say the papers.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1892 (January - October)
Text: Jan. 1 Mild, easy tempered day, overcast with smooth clouds with gleams of sunshine now and then. Mercury down to 25 this morning. Storm approaching from the west. Roads dry. No ice on river, thin ice on ponds. Write a sketch called "A Life of Fear" 2. Rain this A.M. from South, warm as April; rain pretty heavy. -- What is my opinion about this religious business? Well, it is that religion is a sentiment like poetry or art, that it is not an universal gift, that truly...
Show moreJan. 1 Mild, easy tempered day, overcast with smooth clouds with gleams of sunshine now and then. Mercury down to 25 this morning. Storm approaching from the west. Roads dry. No ice on river, thin ice on ponds. Write a sketch called "A Life of Fear" 2. Rain this A.M. from South, warm as April; rain pretty heavy. -- What is my opinion about this religious business? Well, it is that religion is a sentiment like poetry or art, that it is not an universal gift, that truly religiousnatures are as rare as poetic or artistic natures, that there is a gleam or touch of it in most persons, but that it is fully developed in but few, that it belongs to women more than to men, though the finest specimens of it are men as in every other field, that the great mass of the well-behaved church going people are not deeply or truly religious, that it is mainly a matter pf prudence and trhift with them; they join the church as they would take out an insurance policy on their lives or property; they want to be on the safe side, they want to escape hell; fear and not love impels them.that in the great army of clergymen there is only here and there a deeply religious nature. I think Abbott is such. Mulford was such, Father Taylor was such, Elias Hicks, John Knox, and scores of others one could name. In this town I do not know one truly religious nature, tho' there may be several. In my native town I knew none, unless it be old Elder Hewett. Father had a truly religious streak in him, amid much that was harsh and crude. But he was an emotional nature and childlike in many ways. Of our old neighbors, Jerry B. was a church member, and fairlycorrect in his life, but not religious. His five or six brothers were ditto. Uriah Bartram made no profession of religion, nor Dave Dart, nor Ben Scudder, nor File Corbin, nor Hen Shout, nor Alex Silliman, nor John Gould, not Eph Hinkley, nor scores of other successful farmers. The Powells were church members but very worldly minded and hoggish. Grand father Kelly was religious (and boyish) of his children Unlcle Martin was silent upon these things, also Uncle Edmund (now 90) Uncle Zeke, Unlce Charles, Uncle Tom, I think, was a church member, but very reticent.Plenty of pious people everywhere but [crossed out: where] few are those who are sponateously religious, or religious 7 days in the week, religious without thought of reward or punishment hereafter. As the great mass is unpoetical, so the great mass is irreligious. In Jesus, the religion of the Jewish race culminated. The impression which he made upon those who came in contact with him is like the impression of no other man in history. It was a personal impression, and not an intellectual. Hence the myths and legends that grew up about his person, and that are still believed.True religion and undefiled is just as rare as true poetry. As the poet hungers for the beautiful, so the religious nature hungers for the poet hungers for the divine -- after that which Jesus exemplified more fully than any other man, the humanization of the eternal power of the universe, or the fatherhood and brotherhood of God. What does the religious sentiment prove? It proves only itself. It certainly does not prove Heaven or Hell or a personal God, any more than the poetic gift proves the reality of the Muses, or the personality of poesy. 3d Heavy rain yesterday; ground full of water once more. All the drains running copiously. Mercury up to 55 yesterday. Cooler to-day and partly overcast. Robins this morning and last Thursday, Dec 31st. Not even a white wash of snow yet. Yet this A.M. the white backed cars go by, long train of them striped with snow. 4. A white wash of snow this morning. 5th Clear, still day, mercury 20 this morning. Van laying wall. At night northern lights -- a luminous bank in the N. like a phosphorescent cloud. Little boat still running6 Winter is upon us this morning. A seamless cloud over the sky at day light, at 8 1/2 fine sifting of snow from the N, and now at 10 A.M. a regular driving snow storm is upon us. Apparently a fully fledged winter storm. 7 Bright mild winter day with 5 or 6 inches of snow on the ground from yesterdays storm. Fairly good sleighing. 10 A real pinch of winter, mercury this morning down to 5 or 6, river nearly covered with smooth ice now at 10 A.M. stationary -- My moral nature is not fruitful as was that of Emerson and Carlyle, if I may compare myself with these illustrious men. It is notthe source of my ideas as was theirs. The source of my ideas is rather my rational and intellectual nature, or my emotional nature. I have few reflections to offer upon life, or man or society. I would make a poor preacher. I am interested in things, in laws, in growths, in nature, more than I am in man. The platitudes of the moralist and the preacher are tools I never can get the hang of. -- May Cline says I have a standard but not principles. She says it is my ideality and naturalness that has led me into free paths rather than any evil train. she says I am lazy and lack self-esteem. She says that when I do think well of myself then I am conceited. She says I have natural or instinctive justice, but not as much intellectual justice as I should have. Justice, she says is the mother of principles. My reverence and ideality, she says, would give me a standard, but not principles. -- "Self got, see?" I [crossed out: d] said I had no will. She says I have; she sees it in my Roman nose. She says it is a gift to be wonderfully generous and yet to be intensely hurt. She says I am mouldable and very progressive, and certain in some things but that I am stick like a snail to its shell to Emerson and Carlyle and the rest. She says I would not know what to do without them -- in the moral sense. I must put away standards for true principles. Carlyle she says was more of a lion than Emerson. She fears E. was stiffened to a type. He had the N. England sternness and type from which he could hardly depart. She is a penetrating girl. 13. Thaw set in yesterday. Rained all night and slow rain to-day and much fog. No ice in front of me on the river, but ice still fast above. 14 Warm, rainy, foggy. Mercury 50. Snow all off; in P.M. I walkaround beloved vineyard, the ground running with water everywhere. 15 As i sit here in my study at 10 A.M. it is strangely still; not a sound. I look out and behold a white world and the thick meteors of the falling snow, without noise or wind or bluster it comes down, it is a down pour of snow from the North. Snow till 1 P.M. nealy a foot Cardinal Manning died yesterday -- a good man and worthy od rememberance. His last conscious hours of life were spent in imploring God to have mercy upon him. He was firmly posessed with the Christian idea that he was about to to go from a place where God was not, to a place where God is and abides, and that there was great danger that his God wouldbe displeased with him and would punish him! How curious, how curious! Poor man. Why could he not have died in peace. The fault was not his, but that of the horrible old harlot, the Catholic Church. 16. Clear and cold, down to 10 degrees this morning, good sleighing. -- How much force I waste whenever I write upon literary subjects. I have to undergo a sort of apprenticeship to every subject I write upon -- do a great deal of futile and preparatory work write and destroy, write and destroy, leave behind to morrow what I do to-day. It is like opening a quarry, oh, the rubbish that has to be removed, and then often to find there is nothing but rubbish there. 17. Down to 5 degrees below this morning. The trees loaded with the most delicate frost foliage, which now at 10 A.M. the breeze is bringing down. Goethe said to Eckermann, "The observation of Nature requires a certain purity of mind, which can not be disturbed or pre-occupied by anything." 30. Since my last entry the winter has behaved very well. One or two cold waves that sent the mercury down to near zero. One day it was [crossed out: a] 40 or 45 in the afternoon and only 5 above zero in the morning. Ice on the river from 7 to 9 inches. Sleighing nearly gone; wagons preferred. Have been writing on Whitman every day and doing fairly well. I hear he is slowing failing.January 31st Sunday, Mild with streaks of sunshine. Julian and I go to black creek to skate. Walk to Black Pond and find the skating poor, and the creek open; but in the woods on either side the skating was fairly good. The high water of two weeks ago had flooded al lthe low woods and ice had formed. It was a novel sensation to skate through the woods, darting amid the trees. We came down all the way from Black Pond to the Shatega Bridge. Then walked down to a lower level and finally reached Sutcliff's pond, where we put on our skates again. Got a flying squirrel, of old Travis whom we found setting his dead falls near the Creek; and brought him home. A beautiful creature. Fine spectacle in the western sky to-night -- Venus coquetting with Jupiter with the new moon hanging beneath them -- the moon like some great round pod just bursting and letting a rim of light escape. -- In my writing-- other than my out door natural history papers -- I find if I do not look out I am talking in the air. How much I see in my essays that are merely shots fired in the air. One must feel the resistance of something more real and tangible -- not aim to round his periods, but to pierce the subject, and draw blood. Feb. 4 Weather continues mild; but little snow. Heard a song sparrow this morning rehearsing his notes sotto voce; the buds of his song beginning to swell as it were, some of them farily opening A brief warble from a purplefinch also. Feb. 6. Clear and cold -- down to 4 above this morning. My health good these days and life quite enjoyable. -- Many European critics still put Poe at the head of our poets. It is interesting to note that Emerson does not make one extract from Poe in his interesting to note that Emerson does not make one extract from Poe in his Parnassus. Poe considered as a master of the art of poetry, no doubt stands first, but what else has he to offer? Nothing as I see. My soul would die of inanition fed soley upon his poetry. He is a master manipulator, but in no sense a creator. 12. Snowed all day yesterday from the N. about 6 or 7 inches. A mild gentle storm. Yesterday morning on my way to the P.O. discovreed small brown worms, from 1/2 to 1 inch long onthe snow here and there; very sluggish, mercury about freezing. Found them along the road and everywhere near trees; none in vineyard or currant patch, or in open fields free from trees. Hence they did not snow down, but where did they come from and what brought them out? Night before was several degrees below freezing, and had been for many days. After 4 o'clock a few remained on the snow, and then went down into the snow. I dug out one this morning about 4 inches under snow. Sent some to Washington for identification. -- Worms turn out to be the half grown larvae of a species of noctuid moth related to the army worm. Mr Riley says there is no record of their appearing on snow before. 18 Weather clear and cold; Winter has got a pretty firm hold at last, mercury hovering near zero for three mornings now. Ice harvesters having a good time. 19. The winter so far has been a windless winter, no blow of any sort to amount to anything, quite remarkable in this respect. I never remember so little wind. To-day one could carry a lighted candle anywhere. Yesterday the same. Yesterday Julian and I went over to black cree for a skate, the trip a failure. I got in twice, only one foot and leg; built a big fire and dried myself. To-day a fine skate on the river, on the new ice of the ponds. 20. A couple of inches of snow last night. A few worms on the snow again this morning. -- It is said that Spurgeon once remarked in [crossed out: the] his pulpit that "the recent facts of modern science are only worthy of contempt; they are utterly beneath argument." Yet S. was in many ways a great man -- certainly a great preacher and a power for good in his land. A man of narow and darkened mind, of bigotry unfathomable, yet [crossed out: the] our moral and emotional nature [crossed out: of man] is such that a man of his stamp can sway it and fashion it, and make us have nobler and better lives. In intellect he was a child; he had no more conception ofthe true order of the universe than has a Hottentot, or than the fathers of the Church had, still in the vast region of the undemonstrable, of the emotional and subjective, he was a mighty force. Christianity or any religion, does not demand reason of you or science or light, but belief, enthusiasm, veneration, love. Its hold is the will, and not the intellect. I heard Spurgeon preach in London in 1871. A coarse homely man, but racy, full of surprises, sincere, with the magnetism of the born orator. Not one word of what he said remains with me. -- Howells says, very cleverly, that the "New England woman is not gifted intellectually, but she has a conscience like the side of a house." 23. Clear, warm, spring-like; bees out of the hive, a good sap day. Snow nearly gone. Walk up to the corner in the P.M; roads very muddy, rail road dry. 29. Snow all gone; a cloudy quiet day; roads getting dry; freezing hard nights. March 1st The March lion upon us, a roaring, howling snow storm from the north about 4 inches of snow this morning and still snowing at this hour, 9 A.M. 2 The worst storm of the season indeed the only real bad storm so far; snow about 1 foot with strong wind -- snow heaped up in places like the benefits of protection.ground bare in other places. Still snowing this morning by spurts. Storm center seems to have got stuck down on or off the coast. 6. Rather a cold wintry week just past. Mercury down to 10 one morning. This morning little warm. Very bright and clear and spring like. In afternoon I walk up the R.R. to a point 1/2 mile beyond Esopus; track dry and walking good; roads very bad. Song sparrows rehearsing their songs in the bushes. 7 Clear and still. as I go to the P.O. see crows going northward high up against the blue dome. Their plumage glances in he bright sun. Not a breath of wind. Very charming. Mercury at 22 at sunrise.10 Laughter of robins this morning. Call of blue-bird, sparrow songs, etc. Blue-birds and robins first observed 3 days ago. Snow about half gone, getting warmer to-day with signs of southern storm. Poor sleep lately. Have probably been working too steadily on my Whitman essays. Results not very satisfactory. Much more appetite for literary work this winter than for several winters past. Attribute it to almost total abstinence in sexual indulgence. 14 March keeps cold and hard. Mercury down to 12 degrees this morning Birds begin to tune up, but spring does not seem to be very near.15. Bright with cold, biting north wind. Mercury 12 degrees in the morning. Walk up to the auction of poor old Lundy in P.M; roads dry from the cold and wind of past few days. Pathetic to see the sale of a farmers poor old truck -- Lundy dead and hardly cold in his grave and here are his things all brought out to the inspection of the public and sold for a song. I would have bid on his old boots but they were not offered. His father died only a year or two ago, aged nearly or quite 90. 16. Go to P. walk over on the ice. Joel and I dine to-gether. Wanted to get away from myself so I go to P. for a change. Clear and sharp.17. Still cold, down to 15. Mercury has not been above 30, for many days. North and N.E. winds. A great mountain of cold dry air on this continent, its apex far west, near Winnipeg; very unusual, pressure over 31 inches. 18. Began snowing last night at 9, 8 or 9 inches this morning and still snowing, cold, but not much wind. 22 Continues clear, cold, sharp, ground covered with snow, mercury down to 8 yesterday morning -- down to 10 this morning. Up to 30 degrees in middle of day. Overcast in afternoon. 23. Light snow last night slow rain this morning.-- In General Grant there seems to have been two distinct men -- a very great man -- a hero, covered over or wrapped about by a common ordinary man. During his life before the war, this ordinary man seems to have always been on top. The strain of the war brought up to the surface the hero, the great man and for the most part kept him there. During his presidency the vulgar commonplace man shows himself frequently -- the hero subsides again, sinks back out of sight. Strange that he should have wanted A.T. Stewart to be his Secretary of Treasury! It was the ordinary man too that camein collision with Sumner, tho S. was not a hero. Afterward when he again became merely a citizen, the ordinary worldy man ruled. He ran after wealthy men, seems to have had a great itching to be one of them etc. But as the last crisis of his life came on the hero again emerged. It is a great man that wrote those Memoirs, one of the greatest, the cheap worldly man and politician does not show himself here, nor ever again. Grant died a hero. 25 A big [crossed out: w]rent in the river's coat of ice this morning -- hope it will not get patched up this year. From the ice house to the Elbow all intact yet, but from here upto Esopus island, it is broken up. Yesterday the first real spring day. To-day promises to be clear and still warmer. Yesterday P.M. while walking up the R.R. heard a little piping from up a deep glen in the woods, where the ground was nearly all covered with snow. -- P.M. Mercury 52 degrees in the shade, genial warmth at last. Sky and clouds look like summer. I stand or sit in the sunshine and ask nothing better. Snow only in the streaks along fences and in the hollows here and there. Ice going through the Elbow. 27. Start for Roxbury this morning. At Kingston, get N.Y. paper and see that Walt is dead. Postpone my trip. Spend the day with Henry Abbey, very pleasantly, and return home at night. 28 Take early train for N.Y. Spend the day there looking after my articles proofs etc. Pass the night with Ingersoll. 29. Reach Camden at 4 P.M. Black crepe on Walts door bell, shutters closed. I find Bucke, and Harned and Traubel there. Look upon Walts face long and long. Can not be satisfied. It is not Walt. A beautiful serene old man, but not Walt. After a while I have to accept it as him, his "excrementitious body" as he called it. Pass the night with Traubel. 30. The days all the while mild and beautiful. This is Walts funeral day and it very lovely. In the morning I write letter to the N.Y. Post in answer to their atrocious review of my poets. (By Higginson) At 11 go down to the house and find the crowd filing in and out of the house. Conway is there, and Kennedy and many others. May Cline came about 1 P.M. tall, thin and homely. at 1 1/2 Conway and I, and others go out for some oysters. As we eat our stews before the counter, the oyster man shows us Walts book with his autograph in it, presented to him by W. At the Cemetery all went well, very beautiful; a great crowd The scene very impressive; the great tent, perfumed with flowers. Everything goes on in decency and in order. Ingersoll speaks an eloquent and impressive oration. Shall always love him for it. Some passages in it will last. as he was speaking I heard a blue-bird warble over the ten most joyously. The tomb is very grand and will endure as long as time. At night 12 of us go to Phila. and have a dinner, and much talk. 31. Warry and I and Horace go out to W's tomb. Very glad to be there again with the crowd gone. An overcast chilly day. At noon am taken with one of my head aches, a bad night.April 1st Start for N.Y. at 8 1/2. Get proof from Forum and N.A. Review; lunch with Gilder at Players Club. Meet Woodbury, the poet; have a 2 hours talk with him and rub Whitman into him with a vengeance. But I am sure he is already lost; nothing in him but "art" and "art" and "art." But I dose him heavily. Pass the night again with Ingersoll. 2 Lunch with the Gilders and come home at night. No good sleep for nearly a week.3 My 55th birthday; very warm, 82 degrees in shade; remarkable, work all day on proof etc. A strange excitement upon me, my heart seems running away. No sleep last night. Yet I am well, and mind more active than it has been for years. How the birds sing and call, and the swamps are vocal with the little frogs. 4 Still hot and partly overcast. Go to P. in afternoon. 5. Still more than summer heat. Burn brush and gaze and gaze out upon the beautiful spring-touched world. 6 Hot as ever till noon, when winds freshen from the N. and air a little cooler and clearer.Burn brush most of the day. The hottest spell I ever saw in this latitude so early in April. This warm wave may usually be expected about the 25th tho' in '87 it came about the 9th or 10th Again, dear Master, I have [crossed out: las] bitten into this great apple of an earth with my plow and find it as sweet and appetizing as ever; the same old delicious smell, the same old fresh look; yet the new furrow [crossed out: shows the same] is more eloquent and pathetic to me than ever before. Again the swelling buds, and the sprouting grass; again the robin-racket in the twilight, again the long drawn tr-r-r-r-r-r-r of the toad in the gloaming; again the tender ditty of the sparrow, again the water fowl streaming northward, again the "fields all busy with labor", but thou, thou, in thy tomb! 8. The perfection of April Days -- clear, soft, warm, wooing. The miracle of spring once more. As I sit here in the summer house at 9 1/2 I hear the hawks scream, the sparrows trill, the high hole calls distant cackling of of hens, hum of bees, with blue-birds, robins, blackbirds, phoebe-birds -- all within ear shot. A soft film of vapor rests upon the glassy river. The world is so sweet, so benignant these days, yet my thoughts are away in that Camden Cemetery where the great one lies. -- Just read Conways touching tribute to the memory of W. in "Open Court." The remark of Emerson which he quotes"Americans abroad may now come home; unto us a man has been born," brought tears to my eyes. W.W. is the Christ of the modern world; he alone redeems it; justified it; shows it divine; floods and saturates it with human-divine love. 15. Went home last Sunday morning, the 10th. Snow squalls Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday all day; ground white. No sap. Stay to Curtis's till Tuesday P.M. when I go over to Edens, all well there. Back to C's on Wednesday, Thursday overcast. Wednesday P.M. fair, and sap runs a little. Come back home on Thursday. The old home seemed more like home to me than it had for years. Curtis and his family seem to be doing all they can. 16 Weather keeps cold and dry. No drop of rain or snow this month, or since the 21st of March. Partly overcast with signs in the clouds of a cold wave. 17 Clear this morning. Froze quite hard last night. All the old bird voices of April this morning the long repeated call of the highhole the most noticeable. I am fairly well these days, but sad, sad. Walt constantly in my mind. I think I see very plainly how Jesus came to be deified -- his followers loved him; love transfors everything; triumphs over everything. I must still continue my writing about him till I have fully expresesd myself.19 Weather keeps cold and remarkably dry; ploughed fields are dusty. Frost at night, wind froze fast in the north. Met Myron Benton yesterday in P. and brought him home with me. He is off again this morning, not as much talk or satisfaction with him as usual; much oppressed by the Forum withdrawing my article on W.W. -- all becaue the N.A. Review, has one by me on same subject; but from different point of view. On Sunday the 17th took my first walk to the woods; arbutus coming out slowly. Dicentra and bloodroot in bloom; woods are fine. At the station saw one of the neighbor girls with a rosette of arbutus on her breast.Her face was flushed, her eyes shone and she looked very happy. She was waiting for the train to go to H. to be married. Poor girl, I fear a bitter fate is in store for her; her lover is too fond of drink. 20 Froze again last night; the day bright and lovely, but dry and cool and hard. 21. Slow rain to-day from S.E. the first April rain, the first rain for 5 or 6 weeks; much needed. What a feeling or privacy it gives one after so many weeks of roofless days, a feeling of being shut in and drawing near to my books and thoughts! -- Hamlin Garland told me that when he first read "Leaves of Grass" it seemed as if somethingvast, strange, formless, electric had passed by him, and had stirred him as he had never been stirred before. 24 Bright lovely day. Drive to Sherwoods in P.M. a glorious view from his rocky hill. To-day is buried in distant Chicago a man I loved. J. C. Burroughs, son of my fathers Uncle Curtis. He was one of the few men I have known of whom I felt, "he has walked with Christ" -- so simple, sincere, gentle, charitable and brotherly. A man of great activity and endurance, tall, thin, homely. His life was one of toil -- wasted his best strength on the old Chicago University as its president -- latterly was school superintendent.Visited me in the year of the triple eights. A man whom all persons liked or loved. I can just remember his visiting our house when I was a small boy probably in '47 or 8. I remember his overalls and his putting them off and laying them on the outside cellar door. I had hoped to see him again -- but now not in this life. 25 Cold and clear. Froze last night, chilly all day. 26 Still clear, dry, hard; not a cloud; frost again last night. Oh the emerald patches of rye, how the eye singles them out in the brown landscape and lingers upon them.-- There is not hate and bitterness towards Whitman like that of many of our minor poets. They fly at him like a whippet dog at a mastiff. The same set, if they happen to be story writers, like the Cransfordville poet, also snap and snarl at the heels of Tolstoi, one of the most heroic and powerful characters of history. How I ache to lift them with my boot! 29 -- Overcast, threatening rain, but now, P.M. the signs are failing and fading. Some of the maples just ready to shake out their tassels. Over the river I see teams plowing -- a long, narrow, parallelogram of vivid green bending over the rolling groundslowly growing narrower hour by hour,[crossed out: and in a broad setting] surrounded by a broad expanse of brown earth, growing darker and darker as the newly turned turf is [crossed out: neared] reached. Cherry trees putting out a blossom timidly here and there. My old friend, the brown thrasher strikes up to-day. May 1 Warmer, overcast, with sprinkles of rain in P.M. Dr. Bucke came this morning. Very glad to see him, he reminds me strongly of Walt -- large, gray, long beard and walks with a cane. We have a day full of talk and communion. How true it is that you must love a man ere to you he will seem worthy of your love. I did not used to like Dr. B. but since the death of W. myheart has softened towards him and I begin to feel a strong attachment towards him. I see more and more in him to love and admire. A little iclined to run off with a single idea and make too much of it; His idea now is that there is such a thing as Cosmic Consciousness, that it is a new sense or power developing in the race, and that Walt had it in a preeminent degree. Paul had it, as had Buddha and Mahommet, etc. I fear he will ride the idea too hard. In P.M. we drive to the woods and get arbutus. 2. Dr. B. leaves me this morning. Warm and spring like at last. Light rain in P.M. and at night. 4 Lovely thunder shower last night really wet down to the roots of things, first considerable rain for many many weeks. To day one of those pushing days -- some new force behind everything; every bud, every spear of grass pushing [crossed out: it] them out. Hot and sultry in P.M, cooler at night. Currants and cherry trees in bloom. 7. Cool and bright. Cool wave, near a frost, but not quite 10 Lovely May days. Apple trees just bursting into bloom. White-crowned sparrows more plentiful than I ever saw them, in full song past three days about my house. They come down when I feed the chickens and doves and pick up finer particles of the cracked corn. The mosttender and plaintive of all sparrow songs. The song of memory, of the days that are no more. Still writing upon Walt. 14 Cool, cloudy weather past few days. The great artist is fast sketching the different forest trees with light yellow greems. Again the week of bloom is upon us. Again I walk in blossoming orchards, sad and delighted to the point of pain. some maples nearly in full leaf. -- Am reading "The New Spirit" by Havelock Ellis, a suggestive book, yet lacking in something, perhaps in coordination and singleness of purpose. A book of Arnoldson kindred subjects [crossed out: ???] has the force of science, say on Celtic literature, or translating Homer or on the academy, yet it is totally unlike science, except in the power to convince. Mr. Ellis'es book does not convince in this way. The ideal is stronger than the real and personal in him. -- How ones own family, the visible part of it so to speak, dates back to and includes his grandfather. His great-grand father is very shadowy and unreal. But grandfather him we knew, we sat on his knees, and he brought us candies in his pocket. But each generation the peg is moved along one notch and one grandfather drops out.To my boy the [crossed out: tree] stream of life seems to start with my father, to me with grandfther. To my boys boy it will start with me; father will drop out, or fade into the vague and shadowy past; his boy will date from my boy, and I will drop out. So it goes. -- So much of our literature is not written by any body in particular, but by the general intelligence of the times. Most of our poetry is the product of the general culture and poetic sensibilities no matter who writes it, it is all the same. 18 The perfection of May days, bloom and perfume steep the senses. Again is the nymph, shadowborn. I see her cool inviting cirlce beneath the trees. 19 A day of heavy cloud, peculiar, such a sense of mass and spread, the clouds with those long strong clearly-defined keel-shaped bottoms one occasionally sees [crossed out: sometimes] : sometimes the effect was like that of a vast groined or slightly arched ceiling. Seldom have I seen such weight, solidity and power in clouds. I have observed that it never rains out of such clouds as long as this appearance continues; they must be smoothed down and melted or softened before it rains. 20 A splendid rain last night Over an inch of water, veryseasonable. Heavy clouds to-day and cool. 21. Rain again all night and at it this morning, slow and deliberate, a cold May rain, over 1/2 inch last night. Rain continued all day at times heavy. To night the ground is sodden and full, and running over. 27 Plenty of rain -- too much. Very little warmth yet. Just saw a robin make an angry dash at a cuckoo; another robin joined in the hue and cry against it; very significant; it means that the cuckoo does in some way "monkey" around the robins nest.[crossed out: 30] Go to Tarrytown to-day to Mr Thayers, who entertains the authors Club of N.Y. A warm overcast day. Met Stedman, Mabis, De Kay and others. I like Stedman every time I see him, a small man but large hearted and generous Singular how unused his brow looks -- not a wrinkle in it. Not a great person, but lovable and valuable. 31 To N.Y. on my way to Phila to the Whitman birthday dinner, but am much indisposed and reluctantly turn back home. N.Y. never looked more hateful to me. Day hot, and the hard roar and harder iron and granite such a contrast to the soft, lush, tender May.June 1 Summer heat at last. 87 degrees in shade to-day. How things grow! Grape arms just at the tender breakable age. 2d Hot, near 90 degrees. Dash of rain in P.M. 3d Cooler. An oriole this morning with a call like this: "boys, boys, come here, boys!" Of course the words are not there, only the accent or inflection. One season an oriole called, "Set out your grapes" "Set out your grapes." June 6. Start for Rangley to-day. Reach Northampton at 5 P.M. pass the night and part of next day with Miss Peck. Early in morning we have a walk in Paradise -- Mr Cable, Dr Seymour, Miss Peck, Miss Jordan and I. 7. Join Julian at Hartford, where we pass 3 hours. Hot, hot. Reach Boston at 9 P.M. Mr. Kennedy takes us home to Belmont. 8. Pass the day in Boston. Julian climbs Bunker Hill monument. At night take steamer for Portland. 9. In P. this morning. Take 8 1/2 train for Rangley: day of light rain. Pass the afternoon at Phillips and wander about Sand River. At 6 1/2 take train for Rangley, which we reach at 8 1/2 P.M. Mr. Dickson and Rodman meet us 10, 11, 12, 13 at "Maneskookuk" with the Dicksons. Very beautiful and very warm.14 Go in to Kennebago. A tramp of seven miles through the spruce woods over a rude rough road. Kennebago very beautiful: we take lots of trout and I take my first 4 pounder. Pass the night there. See a deer in the morning. 15 Cool and lovely. In P.M. tramp back to Rangley, well satisfied. Kennabago tastes good in our mouths. We must see its lovely waters again. Stay at the Dicksons till 19th when we start for home, which we reach at 6 1/2 P.M. June 21st The country very fresh and green. No drought yet. July 1 Plenty of rain so far, a heavy shower Monday the 27. Shipped currants June 28th 3d Heavy rain to-day from S.W. Came near being the one drop too much. Looks as if we were in for another season like that of '89. The more it rains the dirtier the sky looks. 4. A marked change in weather. Cool, bright and windy from N.W. Looks like fine weather once more. 6 Weather remarkably cool and fair 9 Lovely, bright; cool summer weather till last night, when more rain came. Showers again to-day, but not heavy. 10 Sunday. Pretty hot, and bright. 11 Hot, still day, 84 degrees. 12 Still bright and hot.13. Still very warm, with showers at night. 14 Warm and moist. Now at 7 P.M great masses of cumulus clouds in the east all turned to gold by the sinking sun. The glow falls upon me here in my summer house like a huge lamp. Indicates a change in weather. Cooler I hope and less rain. A little grape rot here and there since Monday. Raspberries at their height. 360 cups to-day. 16 Start for Roxbury to-day; a cool bright day; reach home at 6 P.M. Miss Taylor with us. Fine shower last night. 23. A cool, delightful week at the old place. Excellent hay weather. Curtis and his boys gathering in the hay rapidly. Looks more like home here than for many years before, or since Eden left. Getting hot again; fine shower last night, with much thunder. 25. Very hot yesterday and last night. Showers again early this morning and still slowly raining at 9 A.M. I do little these days but shoot wood-chucks with a Marland rifle, and pick a few raspberries. Aug 1st Great heat the past week with frequent moring and evening showers extraordinary heat all over the country. 7 Cooler, the past week with more showers -- rain every other day. Julian and I go to Homers the 2d and stay all night. H. very feeble. Go to Eden's the 3d and take a few finetrout. 6th Miss T. goes home to-day -- a sensible, clear-souled, intelligent woman. Curtis and I go over to Eden's to-day -- take more trout, and back over the mountains on Sunday the 7th. 8 Clear and fresh to-day -- the perfection of summer weather. Expect to start for home this P.M.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: August 9, 1892 - December 31, 1892
Text: Aug 9th Reach home to-day at 2 P.M. Very hot 94 degrees a regular Turkish-bath atmosphere. Find things all right. A heavy shower at night with wonderful [crossed out: and] continuous and prolonged electric displays. A very carnival of electric gods. Barns and houses struck all over the country, but apparently ten barns to one house. 10 Still fearfully hot, above 90. Go to P. and get photo taken for magazine. Rain in afternoon and evening. 14 Sunday. Rain every [crossed out: day]...
Show moreAug 9th Reach home to-day at 2 P.M. Very hot 94 degrees a regular Turkish-bath atmosphere. Find things all right. A heavy shower at night with wonderful [crossed out: and] continuous and prolonged electric displays. A very carnival of electric gods. Barns and houses struck all over the country, but apparently ten barns to one house. 10 Still fearfully hot, above 90. Go to P. and get photo taken for magazine. Rain in afternoon and evening. 14 Sunday. Rain every [crossed out: day] afternoonsince Tuesday, but not heavy. Grape rot starting up a little. Mrs B and Julian came Thursday night. The [crossed out: gr] germ of the grape-rot seems to have lost its vigor in a measure. The first attack of such things is usually the most severe. The first bite of the venomous snake is most deadly. I notice that the first thunder-storm after a dry spell is most severe; the next days storm is apt to be lighter. First love is most violent. -- Real and true culture can only come through the humanities. A man [crossed out: be] may be learned in the sciences andstill be uncultivated -- coarse, obtuse, materialistic. Soul only can reach soul. Literature alone can reach and enrich and humanize the soul. The mere facts of natural science are like the inorganic elements. Aug. 16 Bright, lovely August days, yesterday and to-day getting warm. Ship first champions to-night. Begin gathering Bartlet pears. Estimate grape crop at nearly 30 tons (turned out to be 36) Pretty well these days, but rather vacant. Beguile some of the time with Piere Loti's "Into Morocco." Very graphic -- just enough of everything.Pride of style in writing is just as bad as pride of style in dress or equipage. The best style is the absence of style, or of all conscious style. You must not think or know how well-dressd the man or woman is. Lotis style does not court your attention at all. It is a mirror. 20. Warm and dry the past week -- the perfection of grape weather. Mercury up to 85 and 88. Cooler to-day, grape-rot not making any head way. Shipped Moors Early the 19th. 26. Just as we began to praise the weather and say how fine, how seasonable, it took a turn and the rains began again. Rained nearly all day yesterday, sometimes heavy, and nearly all night, and nowthe wind has shifted to the N.E. and a cold rain is falling. The weather gods are the most exasperating of all the gods. Nine times out of ten they will turn a blessing into a curse. They are nearly always on a debauch. They will push the dry weather till we are parched and burt up, and the rain till it becomes a deluge. Finished the Champions to-day in the rain, and many vines of the M.E. P.M. Rain very heavy; sets all the drains running and the grapes cracking. Well full. I mutter my anathemas, but the sulky divinities only raise the gates of the [crossed out: g] clouds higher. 27. Cut the first Delawares to-day.31 Last day of summer. Murkey and rainy in the morning, clearing in afternoon; a fine warm sunset. 1 1/2 tons of grapes to-day. Our neighbor Mr. Gordon died yesterday, a fine chivalrous old Switzer. Peace to his soul. (Sept.) 11 The war of the grapes has been hotly pushed the past ten days. Weather cool and bright and dry. Nights very cool suggesting frost; grapes ripened rather slowly; shipped 11 tons past week; never more favorable weather to work; looks as if my crop might bring me 3000 dollars Dear old Whittier died a few days ago -- more of a real country man than any the rest of the our poets. Curtis toohas passed -- the soul of gentleness and grance, and I may add, of honor Dripping foggy mornings. my mother was born 84 years ago to day. No rain for ten days or more Hope to finish the grapes this week. 20. Remarkably cool delightful weather so far this month -- almost perfect. A heavy rain last Wednesday stopped our grape cutting 3 hours. That is all. One could work without sweating, or be still without chill. On Saturday the 17th, the bottom went out of the grape market -- leaving me with 2 or 3 tons of Concords on the vines. These we are sending off slowly and getting low prices. For the first time in nearly a month I can sit at my ease and look up at the serene sky.have lost near 10 lbs in flesh during this grape campaign, but am well and stronger than one year ago. Eat and sleep well. Grapes over 31 tons; will probably bring me 3200 dollars. 29. Bright, dry, lovely September days continue. Never saw a finer month for all kinds of work. No frost yet. Still cutting Concords. To the fair at P. yesterday. On Saturday the 24, went up Snyder Hollow with Gilder and Rodman. The charm of the valley as great as ever. Oct. 2 The remarkably bright dry exhilarating weather continues. Pretty cool; frost near here last night. Our last shipment of grapes to-dayOct 3. Start for Centreport to-day to visit Herber Gilchrist. A bright fine day. Do not tarry in N.Y. take a 4 P.M. train and reach C. at 6. Gilchrist drives me to his hermitage through the dusk over the sandy, gravelly roads. When we reach the beach on the bay we walk a short distance. The horse is little and lame and the road heavy with sand. G. stops at a farm house for eggs. At last we reach his house one mile or more beyond Centreport near the bay -- an old farm house in a little trough of the shore, shut in by low woods -- a picturesque spot, but very secluded and lonely. Here this young Englishman lives all alone, year in and year out, cooks his own food and keeps his own house -- and works at his picture. We sat up till midnight by an open fire and talked and talked. I slept in a small low chamber up stairs. Next day the 4th we went across the bay 4 miles to the Robinsons -- big, fine house, large grounds, great farm, etc. 5 young women -- 2 of them visitors from N.Y. We walk and talk in the twilight, then home to a bright fire and to supper. We stay the night, and have a long drive with the young ladies next day. Weather cold and windy with squalls of hail and rain. Our boat drifts in the night and drags her anchor. We find her on the other shore. In P.M. we row back to Gilchrists, the youngwatching us and waving farewells. In the morning we make clam fritters for breakfast. Windy and cold. G's picture of Cleopatra does not impress me -- fear greatly it is a failure. We talk much of Tennyson whose death is near. G. knew him well. Said he was much less gentle and guarded in speech than Walt Whitman; would say rather blunt rude things before ladies G. said such men as Whitman and Tennyson strike us as poets and artists all through; they are born such while such a man as Browning strikes us as only a poet at times or in part. The lives of W. and T. were the livesof poets pure and simple, the lives of children -- unwordly, and unconventional. They were not men of current society or of current affairs at all. G. feels that Whitman was a great artist from the start, but regrets a crude, uncultured streak in him at times. How G. can stand this solitude is a mystery to me. Came from London to try to find himself in this humble secluded place. Probably a marked re-action against overpopulated England which Englishmen so often show -- Nature trying to remedy her own excesses. I leave on the 1.57 P.M. train G. drives me to the station with his little mare. When the road is [crossed out: hard we] heavy we run along on foot. Go to Bridgeport at night to see Smith and Emma. Reach the house at 7. E. is sitting in the kitchen by the table sewing. Is surprised but glad to see me. Smith comes in by and by and is equally surprised and pleased. It is good to see them again after 3 years; the old time feeling comes back. Next day we leave at 1.57. Miss the train in N.Y. and do not reach home till Sunday at 10 A.M. Weather still fine and warm.12 Golden October days continue. I spend the days looking into Tennyson and musing on various matters, a mellow poetic spirit, like that of the dead poet seems to pervade the air. All the woods and groves stand in the richest autumn livery. -- Is there more reverie than contemplation in Tennyson, and is he to that extent weakening and dissipating? Does he sap the will? Longing, retrospection, regret -- these largely make the atmosphere of his poems. An infanct crying in the night An infant crying for the light And with no language but a cry.He was the poet of the old world, not of the new -- of a rich deep, ripe, refined civilization -- not of a new, fermenting, democratic, era and land like America. We enjoy him, but he is not of us. He is not always manly. He is much less as a personality than Whitman -- much more as a polished conventional orthodox poet. It is rarely that he gives one the impression of mass, of power, or makes you partaker in the universal brotherhood of man. Ripe and mellow always, but tonic and uplifting rarely. 16. Bright and lovely weather still. The days like music. A gentle rain again last night, as one week ago -- a rain out of the west, very slow, timid and still, as if afraid of waking the sleepers, or of hastening the fall of the fast loosening leaves. This P.M Julian and I walk to Sunset Rock and [crossed out: have] feast our eyes on the wide view; then back by Brookmans new road through the woods. Reach home with our pockets full of large chestnuts. Katy-dids still rasping and sawing the night hours. No frost to hurt our tomato vines yet. 20 Again the maple in front of my window glows like a sunset cloud; it fills the room with a soft golden light. The autumn tints usually rich everywhere, owing I suppose to the dry, sunshiny weather; weeks and weeks of almost unbroken sunshine.Little frost yet. The katy-dids and tree crickets still heard; birds holding their fall reunions all about. Tit-larks flying south, uttering their shuffling, lisping notes and calls. Health good these days and life fairly sweet. Beginning to nibble at my pen again. 22. Lovely days continue. How the breezes shake down the gold from the maples. 30. Fine dry weather continues No severe frosts yet. Miss Burt came last night. A woman of rare sense and intelligence; think she is destined to work a revolution in methods of teaching children. Nov 1st Mild and hazy. Meet Abigail at R. and go with her to N.Y. Her eyesvery bad, tho' mending slowly. She is much broken up and has suffered a great deal -- has not the heart to make the trip alone. She takes train for Bridgeport at 5. Take the boat up the river to P. 3d A slow mild rain last night and this morning, but now, P.M. it is fair and warm: bees humming and birds singing. 5 Light rains, followed by a cold snap, the coldest yet. -- All great poets are teachers. It is one test of the great poet; What does he teach us? He helps us to master life, to understand life. Arnold is right when he says poetry is a criticism of life. Tennyson was a teacher so was Whitman. Was Lowell, Whittier, Longfellow? Poe and Swinburne certainly not. How much of life does the poet illuminate? Does he throw any light o the questions that vex mens souls? Not solve them because they are insoluble, but help reconcile us to them, help won't us to the planet? The great poet reflects back to us the spirit of the times in which we [crossed out: life] live, we understand the age and ourselves better through him. We see America and democracy in Whitman as we could never see them without him. We see the ripe, mellow civilization of aristocratic England in Tennyson as in no other poet, Whittier and Longfellow help us understand New England. Our younger poets do not seem to me significant; they are not large enough to be representative. Stoddard, Stedman, Taylor, Lanier -- were all men of fine gifts, but they have no tenacity of life as poets. Their poetry cannot compete with or hold its own with the men of larger vision and stronger grip The mass of the literature of any age, and of ours especially, is the literature of pas [crossed out: s]time; it helps fill up the hour and that is all the demand we make upon it. Our poetry is the poetry of pas[crossed out: s]time. Taylor, Lanier and the rest, wrote the poetry of pas[crossed out: s]time. Unless a mans outlook upon the world is wide and commanding, he can do nothing in literature that will last or really help. Yet it is curious that the great poet or writer leaves the world just where he found it. We say he [crossed out: done] did this and that, he cleared up this question and let floods of light in there and there; and yet it is all to be done over again by the new man-- How the world seems to go to pieces as we grow old. The world in which we were born and live does go to pieces, like a cloud in the summer sky. The families we knew are broken up; the parents die, the children die or are scattered, old partnerships are dissolved by death or disaster. The face of society is all changed: we do not see the new world that is slowly organizing and taking the place of the old, the world as our children will know it and which will in turn go to pieces to them. The clouds in the sky are scarcely more changeable and flitting than the face and elements of life, always and never the same. -- I love wild virgin nature, but I am repelled by unkept nature, by nature that has relapsed from cultivation, or that is only halfcultivated and gone to weeds and bushes. Hence the English landscape satisfies so much more than [crossed out: the] our own; it is a more perfect product; it is perfectly cultivated and ours is only half so. The raw, the crude -- they always repel in Nature as in life. -- Concrete idealism is a good term to express much there is in Emerson and writers of that ilk. 6th As I was out by the barn this morning I heard a continuous pattering sound above me, and on looking saw it was the leaves falling from the mulberry tree. The leaves of this tree do not seem to mature and ripen like others, but hang on [crossed out: ???] and keep green till the frost cuts them when they let go. Last nights freeze was making them let go. It was perfectly still, and the heavy leaves Came down quickly like great green snow flakes. Not a second elapsed that several falling leaves were not in the air. I thought it was like the tree of life from which death is constantly cutting down the leaves. Sometimes one leaf in falling would loosen others, and they still others, till a handful would come rushing down. The upper branches were affected most. 8. Light rain last night from the S.W. Cleared off this morning and the day became a marvel of beauty. Bees out of the hive, crows cawing high in the air. Some friends come up from P. Eat their lunch here in my study, and in the afternoon we walk up to Esopus. I vote for Cleveland and then we go to Indian rock, and from thence to a near field where we search for Indian rock, and from thence to a nearfield where we search for Indian relics. Booth and Lown have eyes for these things; they almost smell them. To my surprise I find 4 broken arrow heads; the others find several also, and a sinker-stone, pounding stones a broken pestle etc. A delightful walk 13. Some rain and snow since my last date and more cloud; fair again to-day and mild. -- Renan says a man fashioned according to the discipline of science is on the whole a better man than the instinctive man of the ages of faith. He may be less sublime but he is also less ridiculous. -- A walk through the woods this P.M. to Sunset Rock and back; insects dancing here and there in the sun, saw a rabbit, a partridge, and heard asquirrel, and had many long sad thoughts. Got back after sundown. -- I notice that boots and shoes standing alone, always have a sad look, never a smiling or joyous one. The wrinkles about the instep seem to cause it. -- "Chimeras", says Renan, referring to the popular religion "have succeeded in obtaining from the good gorilla an astonishing moral effort." These chimeras -- the church and its creeds -- are probably entirely provisional; they help hold the race up till it can stand without them; it is the chair by which the child learns to walk. We have discovered that virtue, that right living, has a scientific basis. When this knowledge becomes general, the work of the church is done. At least, its supernaturalism can be laid upon the shelf. We are helped from within then and not stayed from without.All men know Nature -- they do not know God -- he seems afar off and unreal may be a "Chimera". When we find that Nature says, live rightly, be temperate, be chaste, be brotherly, etc. we shall heed the voice. The Church has of course discredited Nature in the interest of this not Nature -- it has deferred the fruits of righteousness to some future sphere and when men have lost faith in that they have lost faith in virtue One was as arbitrary as the other, both were un natural and unreasonable. When we come fully to understand and value the world about us, we shall not need any other. But will mankind ever come to see and appreciate the God in the ground under foot? Doubtful. -- Righteousness is the word of religion, rightness, the word of science. What is the difference?-- How imposing and authoritative this verdict of the people seems -- almost supernatural -- a voice from out the depths. How the politicians heed it and trim accordingly or bow their heads in reverence. We do no realize that it is only the voice of Tom, Dick, and Harry right around us, whose private individual opinions we have very little respect for. If you multiply a foolish mans opinion by one million or by ten millions, is it any the less the opinion of foolishness? This is probably the way Carlyle would have viewed the matter. There is a fallicy in that statement. When the opinions of an ordinary man become[crossed out: s] wide spread and become[crossed out: s] the opinon of large masses over a large extent of territory, it is very significant. It is like the voice of Nature; it is a matter of fate. Every era or age has its master currents of opinion and thought. The master current in the political field just now is in favor of less restrictions on commerce and against home trusts and monopolies.The voice of a multitude is more impressive than the separate voices of the individuals composing the multitude. There is a spirit, an atmosphere in the forest that individual trees hardly hint. Is the social organism a real entity? Is there a general will over or under all the private wills? The country speaks -- how protentous, how commanding! No doubt our imaginations have much to do with it. 16 Heavy rain last night -- the ground full of water again, a cyclone from the south, pretty warm. 17 Lovely mild day, bees out the hive. N.Y. Herald thinks the winter is likely to be more sever than last. We will see. 18. Listened on Wednesday the 16th to the dedication sermon over in the little church by Dr. Reese of Phila. Pretty poor stuff from my point of view, mere rhetoric, and not very good rhetoric at that, did not lay strong hands upon the hearer at all, ineffective, perfunctory and tiresome to me. The preacher must not let off rockets, he must send bullets directly into the congregation -- he must hit the sense, the reason, the humanity of his hearer. He is not there to make a sermon, he is there to speak to the hearts and minds of the people; -- he must find them. What the preacher said did not strike in at all, it did not take hold, it did not bite. How the heart, the mind, the soul delight in being fairly hit. The sermon was like hard water in which one tries to wash -- it did not take hold. Poor literature is also poor sermonizing. A thing is well said when it fairly hits the mind; it is poorlly said when it merely fills the air.18 The outer skirts of a cyclone sweep us to-day, vicious wind with spiteful dashes of rain as in '89 when Johnston was swept away. Centre of the storm West and N. of us, probably the lakes. It came up from Texas. 19 Clear and bright to-day and a little colder, some frost last night. 20 Go out home to-day. Walk up the hill from depot, surface of the ground frozen and icy in places. Find Curtis's folk well, except Olly who has a felon on her thumb. I am very glad to be there once more. It really seems like home. I stay all the week, weather cold, snow squalls every day and all day. A bleak winter landscape. On Monday we drive to top of mountain at head of Hard scrabble and cut a "coon-tree". No coons, all left for winter quarters. Wednesday I go over to Edens; find them all well. Eden hunting, Hiram looks well and hearty. 24 Thanksgiving day. Take dinner at Edens and then back to Curtis's. Snow squalls all day. I am quite content to sit by the fire and dream of the old days. Sell Curtis the farm for 10,000 C. seems cheerful and happy, better times with him than he has ever known, actually has a surplus of 350 dollars at the end of the year. Back home Saturday morning no snow here, dry and cold.29. First considerable snow last night, 6 or 7 inches wet and heavy. Colder this morning. Winter evidently close by. Dec 1. Cold, overcast most of the day. Snow melts a little and roads are muddy. Quite indisposed these days. The question discussed in the last Century "Does the bible contain scientific errors" Seems to me absurd. The bible does not directly or indirectly teach science. But the bible in these matters is no wiser than the times in which it was written. The notions current in those times among the Jews about the relations of man to the systemand the laws of the visible universe were for the most part erroneous they were unscientific, or anti-scientific. These notions crop out in the bible; they do not vitiate the bible in any way, no matter if the sun was thought to move around the earth, if miracles were believed, or demoniacle possession was thought common, if the dead could rise, etc. these things do not detract from the value of the bible as a religious book; they rather add to it. Shall we ask are there scientific errors in Homer or Dante or Shakespeare? These poets reflected the knowledge and mis-knowledge of their times Are there poetical errors in Euclid?-- A long harangue by Mrs B. at dinner about my worthlessness, my inability to keep her in the style she deserves, and surround her by the conveniences she merits and needs. My brains of which I boast, she says, are the unprofitable kind. So many people with far less can buy and sell me any day. But for her, she says, and quotes Mrs Akers in confirmation, I would have been in the poor house long ago. With all my years of study, and all my knowledge, I yet earn so little money, and she has to slave and toil in consequence. (Only the other day I gave her 450 dolalrs) She seems to see no values but money values. Doubtless she had rather I made an almanac that brought money, than the books I have made. It is an old, old story. Blessed are the poor in purse, for they shall relish their dinner.Dec. 5 Go to N.Y. to-day with wife. Spend the week in the city much of the time with Miss Burt. Visit Berkley School and hear the boys read from my books etc. On the night of the 8th attend a literary reunion in Brooklyn; hear Marion Crawford read. A strong fine voice, but no life or flexibility in it or him, dull, tiresome. Meet Miss Wilkins -- not pretty, eyes too small, but has an original, home-made look, a little creature. Back home on Saturday the 10th. 11th Back to N.Y. again to-day. At Stedmans in the evening. To Boston on Tuesday, the 13th with Miss Burt and Mrs Ben AliHaggin. A pretty black eyed widow, said to be very rich. Spend the week in Boston am interviewed and dined and put through generously, twice on my feet trying to speak before gatherings of teachers etc. Meet Bradford Torrey; a fine souled fellow -- [crossed out: ???] suggests a bird, with his bright eyes and shy ways and sensitiveness. Meet E.E. Hale, a fine face -- next to Whitman's among modern faces -- ought to be a great man back of it. Call on Prof. Norton at Cambridge, a fine man and gentleman. Back home via N.Y. on Sunday, the 18th. Weather cold and wet by streaks. 24. A cold wave since the 22d Down to 10 this morning, with high wind. Much ice in the river. No snow on ground. Little boat stops on 22d. Sleep ruined last night by Mrs. B's tongue. No work to-day. 25. Cold, 20 degrees, overcast; light flurry of snow all day. Do a little writing and much moping. 26. Cold, clear, mercury 18 all day. A light white wash of snow on the dry hard ground. 27. Below zero this morning, clear and still. River closed and men at work staking out ice ponds.It is like checking the fire by putting on fresh fuel; it checks it for a moment, but suppose you keep it up? 27. P.M. A tramp back to Sutcliffs pond this P.M Julian and I, and a skate on the pond. Saw where an otter had come up out of a hole on the bank and ran and dragged himself over the snow. Every few rods he evidently dragged himself along on his belly, as one may sometimes see a dog do. His track was as large as a shepard dogs. At the head of the pond he had gone into the open water where it ran rapidly. Farther up we saw his track again on the large pool below the old mill. Is it to dry his wet fur that he drags himself like a dog here and there? Muskrats tracks common, and in the woods coming back lots of fox tracks and partridge tracks. 28 Still clear and cold, 10 degrees this A.M. That which distinguishes the true literary artist from the mere thinker, says the French critic Scherer, is a vigorous sensuousness, the concrete and immediate impression of things. He elsewhere speaks of that simple and natural realism without which art cannot exist. 29. Still dry and cold, down to 5 degrees this morning 30 clear and cold: roads dusty, mercury 10 degrees this morning. -- The vital literature is not made by the study of literature but by the study of things, or of life. Dec 31. Down to 10 again this morning; ice 6 inches on River and as smooth as glass all in front of us. Go skating in afternoon -- still overcast, mild, a perfect day for skating. Air hollow -- storm approaching. The last day of '92. A lucky year for me, brought me both pleasure and profit. -- It is all the more pathetic and difficult to deal with because all her faults are virtues perverted or pushed too far. Her terrible cleanliness, her ceaseless war upon dust and dirt, what a virtue liesback of it! Her thrift, wearing out herself and others to save her things, what a virtue perverted is here. Her brutal frankness springs from a trait we all admire -- truthfulness, sincerity. But when she calls you a liar without provocation or because you differ from her, it is too much of a good thing. She hate deception to the point of discarding all the little disguises and half tones of life -- there is nothing but the bare ugly prose left, no charm no illusion, no romance. [crossed out: She] The spirit in which she condemns evil is worse than the evil itself. She always fires on a flag of truce. "Want to parley and apologize, do you! I thought you would eat your own words, but you shall eat them red-hot!" She is so bent on the Monday's washing that she begins Sunday night.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1893 (January - May)
Text: 1893 January 1st Sunday, overcast, begins to snow at 9, one inch of snow and then rain. Rains hard in afternoon and night, a down pour. A weather spasm, mercury jumps up. I fear it means a mortal wound to winter. Spasms are always a sign of weakness in nature or in man. Steadiness means strength. Abrupt and extreme changes mark open winters. We shall see. A Happy New Year. The word has not passed my lips to-day, and no one has saluted me thus.2d Mild, soft, warm-looking clouds, ground full of...
Show more1893 January 1st Sunday, overcast, begins to snow at 9, one inch of snow and then rain. Rains hard in afternoon and night, a down pour. A weather spasm, mercury jumps up. I fear it means a mortal wound to winter. Spasms are always a sign of weakness in nature or in man. Steadiness means strength. Abrupt and extreme changes mark open winters. We shall see. A Happy New Year. The word has not passed my lips to-day, and no one has saluted me thus.2d Mild, soft, warm-looking clouds, ground full of water or covered with water which can't get in for the frost. Ice soft on top, but skaters and ice-boats out. 3d Colder, nearly clear. Ice good. Julian out with his sai. -- On my way home from the P.O. to-night something suddenly brought into my head the vision of the corn-shelling at home in my boyhood, the great splint basket with the long frying pan handle thrust through its handles across the top, held down by two chairs on either side, and my two brothers [crossed out: scraping] sitting in the chairs and scraping the ears of corn against the handle. I hear the kernels rattle, a shower of them falling in the basket, with now and then one flying out in the room. With the cobs which [crossed out: are] lay in piles beside the basket I build cob-houses, carrying them up till they topple, or till one of the shellers hits them with a cob. Mother is sitting by her tallow dip hung on the back of a chair sewing. Winter reigns without. How it all comes up before me! Soon will it be 50 years ago. Gone, all gone. 5 Go to Camden to-day to the Whitman re-union. Reach there at 6 [crossed out: A] P.M. Not very satisfactory, rather a common place swell affair, not a bit Whitmanesque. Do not get a chance to fire off the speech I am laded with. A heavy snow storm -- about 10 inches in C. and more farther south, less up the Hudson. 6 Spend the day in Phil. with Harned and Johnson; both nights at Traubel. 7 Pretty cold. Back to Po'keepsie where Julian and wife are boarding. 9 Snow and cold. 10 Up home to-day. Can't stand P. Set up housekeeping, the cat and I. 11 Cold wave, mercury down to 6 degrees below this morning. The white plain of the river once more dotted with ice men scraping off the snow; ice 9 or 10 inches. Fathers funeral day, nine years ago. 12 Mercury at zero this morning, a fine snow falling out of a thin seamless cloud -- can see blue sky through it. A busy scene on the ice in front of my window, just opening the canal. Poor sleep last night. -- If our senses were fine enough to detect it, we should probably find we are living in a sea of forces and influences that is continuous with the solarsystem, or with the whole universe, [crossed out: out of]and which is really the source of our lives. The visible, material part of us comes out of the earth, but whence comes that which selects and uses these earth elements? The earth is obviously an apple on a tree, and is fed and held by forces we reck not of. The tree of life itself, we see not. 20 At P. the past week; weather heroic; quiet, steady, persistent cold mercury below zero nearly every morning -- from 4 to 16 below -- Very dry -- the light snow like chaf; ice 14 inches on the river. Pretty well these days and fairly happy. The sudden spasm of rain January 1st did not mean much after all, or else meant the opposite of my interpretation.-- The nectar of flowers, or cane sugar which the bee gathers, he makes into honey by reducing the sugar and adding formic acid and other elements from his own stomach. It is believed that it is mainly the young bees that transform the nectar into honey, "that possibly they swallow and regurgitate it several times that the ferment from the head glands may the more perfectly transform the nectar." 27 Much milder the past week, a little snow -- frost down as usual, plucked from the breasts of the clouds -- and much sunshine. Not lower than 22 for several days, and up to 35 and 40. A remarkable absence of wind all winter. No bluster about such artic weather as we have had; the cold was so great that it easily triumphed. "I came, I saw, I conquered."31. Weather still mild; rain two days ago. Light snow last night. Met a boy yesterday walking in from the country on the R.R. track, with a live crow in his hands. He had picked the crow up about 4 miles out. It was blind, both eyes with a milky film over them. It was in a flock of other crows. How had it lived. It was poor. Had the other crows fed it? -- Last year was the year of red apples -- very few greenings, or other light-colored sorts, but orchards rosy with Kings and Baldwins and all crimson kinds. -- Giants and athletes are not long-lived. Philip Brooks was a giant in stature and in strength. His feat of thinking and speaking 250 or 300 words a minute was gigantic -- the work of an athlete. He died at 57, apparently worm out -- the heart failed. Feb 5. Rain and sleet past week and snow. Cold wave yesterday; mercury down to zero this morning. -- Why should I have such an aversion to Swinburne? If I read him two minutes I am fairly gasping for breath; his page is a kind of intellectual vacum --writing tangible in it, written thought nor feeling but words, words words. It is like a moonlight shadowdance. His seems like a castrated mind and soul, a [crossed out: ???] one of the neuter gender. He is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. I should think that certain brain diseases, like hydrocephalous (ophalous), might give rise to such a flux of words. I tried to read his poem on the death of Tennyson, and though I went over it twice, I got not the least breath of meaning. -- I suspect that Tennyson was unconscious of the softer, over-ripe, over melodious character of his poetry. In reading it, they say, he took that element out, and made it wild and almost savage. As a man he seems to have been like a loaf with a rather hard bake on it, crusty, forbidding [???] and rough of speech, slovenly [crossed out: shabby]in dress, abrupt in manners, willful, ungrateful and exclusive -- not at all the melodious, conventional, slightly effeminate character he appears in his poems, the product of an old, rich, over-ripe civilization. -- 10 Very icy. much rain the past few days, followed by cold wave. Mercury down to 4 degrees below 3 days ago. Raining this morning. 14 Clear and bright and mild, after the biggest snow storm of the winter -- about 10 inches of snow yesterday. -- What you will least find in Whitman is the excitement of the literary sense; whatyou will least find in him is the excitement of the sense of life and things. -- Cameo carving is not sculpture. Great artists are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions. The little man lays all the stress upon finish, upon form and detail. -- Symond's mind has not the clear strong stamp of Arnold's. He will not leave so definite and indellible a mark upon literature. In power of appreciation he is greater than Arnold -- has wider sympathies, etc. but has not his singleness and directness. Arnold -- has wider sympathies, etc. but has not his singleness and directness. A's thougts are more spinal and typical.-- The great artist is identified with his subject; it is his subject. He does not merely write about it, he is it; it fuses and blends with his personality. The lesser poets search for a subject; to the great poet the subject comes; he stands in his place and it finds him. 18. Came up home yesterday to stay a few days. Began snowing last night and has continued nearly all to-day, 9 or 10 inches -- about 21 or 22 inches of snow this week, and some rain. 19. Bright to-day, and not very cold. What a white world! Oh! the thoughts and memories that find me out here in my solitude! Some sweet, some bitter.20 An old fashioned winter day -- a roaring wind and sheeted ghosts of snow stalking through the air. The most blustery day of the season. Clear, cold with the driving wind, drifts forming everywhere. Alone in the house and not unhappy. 21. Clear, still, cold, mercury about 2 below zero. Hard drifts crunch under ones feet this morning. 22. Another raging snow storm -- the worst of the season; began in the night, a north Easter. Air full of driving whirling snow; up to my knees all the way to the P.O. this morning; falling at the rate of an inch or more an hour, I think. Snowed till noon, and then wind and flying snow. Snow leg deep nearly everywhere. -- "An inevitable ear And an eye practiced like a blind man's touch" -- this is the equipment of the true observer. 25 -- Walk up to the corner in afternoon in a still silent falling snow, a ghostly rain that makes no sound. Coming back it fell very think and fast, quite shutting out the landscape. In such a storm or snow shower one feels as if walking in the woods, or in a jungle; there is a privacy and shut in feeling about it. 26. Clear, white and blue still world. Snow three feet deep all the trees outlined in snow. An engine stand over to Hyde Park and the column of the steam goes straight up from it, casting a long dark shadow out on the white surface of the river. Only the tops of the currant bushes visible. March 1st In N.Y. attended the dinner of the Authors Club last night. Spoke for the first time and did fairly well. Papers say my speech and Jeffersons were the speeches of the evening. With practice I think I could beat any of them. Too much chaff in the speeches -- no serious word. Another big snow storm. 2d Start for Washington to-day at 11 A.M. Reach there at 7 at night. Mild and really spring like. The great avenue crowded with people. Breathe the atmosphere of the beautiful city once more. Stop with Frank Baker on the Corcoran St. 3d Mild with sprinkles of rain. A fearful head ache last night, probably the result of the dinner and speech making at Authors Club. Walk up to my old house on V. Street in morning and stand as long as I dare at the gate looking in. Place much neglected and in need of repairs. The brick walk I laid is still in good condition, as is part of the fence I built. What a host of thoughts and memories crowd in upon me! 4 Snow and cold; a villainous day for the inauguration of Cleveland. We start at 11 in a covered wagon; See [crossed out: ???] C. and Harrison pass up the Avenue in a carriage; throngs of shivering people; slush on the streets; snow in the air. At the Capitol, after long waiting we witness the ceremonies in front, jumping and slapping to keep warm. Then C steps forward and speaks his piece, with uncovered head. "Grover, put on your hat," we all feel like shouting. I only hear his strong manly voice buffeted by the wind. Then we drive home and stay in rest of the day. 5th Clear and cold and windy. Dine at Maj. Saxtons and have a pleasant time. 6. Warmer. Go to the old office in Treasury and look up old friends. Only a few left. At night dine with Theodore Roosevelt and then witness grand fire worksnear monument. 7 Bakers people give me a reception in evening, as they did on Sunday evening. 8 Mild and spring like. Speak before a class of young ladies in Normal school; talk about birds and things. In afternoon go out to Chevy Chase with them and walk through the fields. A pleasant time. (7.) Mrs. Philling drives me about the country. Visit Rock Creek cemetary and am deeply impressed with St. Gaudens figure at the Adams grave. The best art I have yet seen of the kind, wonderful9 Warm, clear, and really spring like. Visit Oak Hill cemetery and stand long and long at the grave of Wm O'Connor. Crows caw, hens cackle in the distance. The Carolina wren is vociferous near by. A beautiful spot on the side of the norhtern slope of the hill. Nearly all the land about occupied with graves. Jeannies grave and that of his infant son Phillip, at the foot of his. How his presence and voice come back to me! An April like day. I doubt if Wm would ever have visited my grave had he outlived me. A remarkable talent, nearly thrown away. He lacked the saving grace of perfect sanity. Visited the grave Mr. Knox also, as yet unmarked by a stone. Friday and Saturday I poked about town. 12. Fine day. Go with Frank to zoological park, in my old stamping grounds on back of Rock Creek. What memories the old scenes call up! On a sunny slope in the woods find a solitary hepatica in bloom. Spend three or four nights with Aaron Johns, my old comrade. 13. Start for home at 9 1/2. See the plough and cultivator going in Maryland. No snow visible till we near N.Y. Warm and delightful.14 Again in P. 15. Back home to W.P. to-day, and settle down in my old tracks. 18. Cold and clear. Robins and blue birds and sparrows and starlings here. Spotted fields, pied with white and brown like the sides of devonshire cattle, white predominating. In afternoon walk over the spotted fields, and sit a long time on a rock in the sun, shielded from the north wind by cedars. 19 Still clear and cold. mercury down to 14 this morning. Alone in the house and pretty lonesome at times. When one has made up his mind to do a thing -- a dis-agreeabe duty for instance -- how surely he gains strength to do it. The keeping up of the will brings strength. When I had resolved the other day to go to N.Y. and speak before the Authors Club to speak or pride, I found my courage and strength mouting all the time. There is in this fact an explanation of much religious experience of our fathers -- the divine aid and comfort they felt when they had resolved to do this or that -- when they threw themselves wholly upon God. The will rightly directed is God in man. Conscious, deliberate self-denial, too, brings strength, brings joy.21. Back home from P. this A.M. whither I went on Sunday. Light rain this morning clearing this P.M. and warmer. Bees out the hive and the sparrpws jubilant. Ice on the move this afternoon in front of us, moving up very slowly, outlining vast, irregular continents or islands by a white windrow of crusted ice. The river is in labor, behold by to-morrow morn the new dimpling smiling water once more. 22. Overcast, but mild. The door stones covered with beautiful frost ferns this morning. The air vocal with bird voices. Turtle-dove yesterday P.M. and chip munk. -- How blind and stupid nature is. She learns by experience, and only so. When a woman after a certain age has her first child, she usually has a very hard time. But her next child comes much easier. Nature has learned by experience. The body has been taught. One would have thought that nature would have made ready for the first delivery during the period of gestation. But the terrible experience was necessary. In all things God experiments and feels his way like a blind man. What endless experimenting and make-shifts all departments of organic life show[crossed out: s]. When the best way is hit upon, then that is adhered to. 23 A miserable March storm, 6 inches of snow last night with rain and hail this morning. Dark without, dark within. 25. Made my second after-dinner speech lst night at the dinner given by the Aldine Club to Mr. Aldrich. Did not do as well as at the Authors Club dinner. Ate too much and drank too much champagne -- fancied I would not be called upon etc. Yet I was the only speaker who repeated any of Mr. A's poetry -- and I did not learn it for the occasion either. Poor sleep, palpitationof the heart, etc. Return to P. in afternoon. Mild day. 26. Mild spring day. Spend it in P. 27. Return to W.P. to-day with wife and enter upon another campaign of housekeeping. Day mild and spring like. 28. Bright and sharp, cutting north wind. A noble sight about 7 o'clock -- 11 swan pushing norward against the wind. Slow progress, a train of cars worth looking at. 29 A day of great brightness and beauty -- not a cloud in the sky, but chilly and frosty. Julian comes home from scool for the Easter holidays. April 1st April come again -- "proud pied April." My natal month. Weather continues mild and spring like. Julian and I go over to Black Creek for ducks. Overcast, with S.W. wind, much snow in the woods. We wade through water nearly knee deep to a little mound beside the creek near the outlet of black pond; screen ourselves with some boughs and await the return of the ducks that sprang up by the score as we entered their territory. I get one shot and miss. Presently more came, but to please J. I do not fire, and they go off, the chance notcoming to us again. How curious they looked flying over us, like long necked bottles J. says, with little tin wings. Heard a warbler in the woods. Get our feet wet and cold, but built a fire and dried and warmed them. Altogether it was a day well-spent for both of us -- an adventurous day, a real taste of the wild. 2d Bright and windy and cooler than yesterday. Julian takes early train for Roxbury. It is a pleasant thought that he will spend some days in the maple woods and amid the scenes where my youth was passed. I know the contenances of these old trees almost as well as I know those of the neighbors.1893 Around many of them cluster little memories of my boyhood. Each has an expression and an individuality of its own. The little piping frogs this afternoon in the swamp which was partly covered with ice. April 3d My 56th birthday. A charming spring day, wind S.W. partly overcast. A storm center passing far to the north of us. Bees working on honey. Mercury near 60 degrees. No snow visible from my window. The robin racket becoming spirited. Indoors in forenoon, reading writing, etc. Blast some rocks in afternoon, and poke about. Roads dry. Vineyard soon ready for the plough. Health good and mind fairly active. Every hour in the day tastes good. 5. Day of great beauty and transparency, the air winnowed by the north wind of last night. Not a film in it. Yesterday the mercury reaced 70, cooler and sharper to-day 6. The sharp, electric day bred a small snow storm, which whitened the ground this morning. Clear off by 10 A.M. and day becomes very bright and sharp, cuts like a knife.7. Snow storm sets in this A.M. from the south. It is now at 9 1/2 coming down very rapidly. Froze last night. Snow fell about 4 inches and ended in fine rain. 8. We were woke up in the night by heavy thunder. Misty this morning with South sind. Chilly but snow melting fast. Fox-sparrows in song yesterday and to-day. A brisk thunder shower about noon. Brief thunder showers all afternoon. Winter on the ground and summer in the sky. Never saw anything just like it before.April 9 Bright lovely April day, the perfection of the spring weather. Julian came back from Roxbury Saturday night, brown and hearty, had an excellent time. How it will come back to him in future years, he and Ed sitting in big dry goods box before the camp fire, boiling sap. Saturday 15. Cold slow rain from N.E. Much cloud this week and light rain. No frost and no heat. Buds large on currant bushes, but not open yet. Elm trees nearly ready to bloom. Blue jays and robins nesting. 16 Bright and lovely; found arbutus and hepatica to-day, near the R.R. and dicentra nearly ready 19 Lovely week so far, tho' cool, no heat yet; light frost last night. Very charming this morning. Van ploughing vineyard. The April days have the old charm. 20 Snow, rain and hail all day a heavy storm all over the country. A cold March storm ground white with water-soaked snow all day. 21 Clearing this morning and warmer; April repents and promises to do better. Snow all gone except in the woods Ground overflowing everywhere.-- In writing it is so difficult to speak out of our proper selves, to let that which is vital and individual in us have sway. We speak and write so much out of the mere limbo of the mind or out of the stock ideas and feeling which we share with all. In all good writing we come face to face with the writers soul or thought, he puts his mind directly to ours. His page is like an open fire, while the page of the mere thinker is too often like the register or stove. Dr Holmes, tho' no great man, has the true literary gift; you get more than his mere thought; you get it in a lively and picturesque way; it is immanent immanentin his sentences. A lively sense of reality is produced by all sound prose. Nothing far off, or vague or vaporous. The man is not speaking through a trumpet, but it is his own natural near-by voice you hear. The page in which the man seems speaking and not writing at all -- that is the page we want -- Montaigne, Bacon, Carlyle, Emerson, Arnold, etc. A man's style is the inimitable part of him. His manner may be imitated but not his style, his quality, his inspiration. Inspiration is inimitable, and incalculable. 26. Clear, brilliant, cold, quite a freeze last night; fear for the currants. No heat yetMercury gets above 50 or 55 degrees some days. Season very back ward. Planted potatoes 25th, peas about the 19th. 27. Rain from South but very chilly. -- By the multiplication of numbers it does not seem that the chances of producing a man of extraordinary ability is also multiplied. It really seems lessened, as if in numbers there was something unfavorable to genius. No doubt in the stir, the excitement of great populations, in the friction, the competition, the publicity, the destruction of local atmo- spheres and flavors the paring away of individuality, etc. etc. there is somewhat inimical to genuis. The whole spirit and atmosphere of this age is no doubt unfavorable to the production of any great literary work. There is no solitude, no privacy, no concentration upon one's self -- nothing that favors egotism, or any kind of narrowness. We are liberalized out of ourselves. There is always a certain narrowness, localness, injustice, in great passion of any kind and in great action. The world is more and more, and the man is less and less. All our greatest names and all of Englands, came out of comparatively small populations. The men born since '30, or '40, or '50 are distinctly lesser lights. There is doubtless more ability and general intelligence in the community as a whole than ever before, but it is less concentrated in single individuals. The day of the average man has come. 28. Warm and bright, mercury gets up to 70; real vernal warmth Currants showing the fruit stems. These days the song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r, is heard in the land. At nearly all hours I hear it, and it is as welcome as any bird song. She is in the pools and puddles now depositing that long chain orravelling of eggs. Her dapper little mate rides upon her broad back and fertilizes the eggs as they are laid. As I look toward the field where the first brown thrasher is singing I see emerald patches of rye. The unctuous, confident strain of the bird seems to make the field grow greener hour by hour. 29. Still, overcast, mild; threats light rain. May Atlantic came this morning, and recalled a May Atlantic that came 32 years ago on such a morning when I was living at Marlboro. It had an essay in it by David Wasson on "Rest and Motion", and I rememberwell how eagerly I sat down outside the door to dip into it before school time. The hills across the river were green with the [crossed out: ???] young rye, or red with the new furrow, and life to me was full of joy and eagerness. Oh, if I could take up this Atlantic with the same zest and expectation! Yet the day is sweet to me. The call of the high hole as it comes up from a distant field, has the old suggestiveness. Even the wheezy cackle of the crow-black bird is pleasing Why do all the bird voices call up my youth and the old home? It is something of those long gone days that makes them so linger in my ear. I have just been out digging rocks with the boys and satisflying a sort of craving for rocks and soil that comes upon me in the spring. My father was a great rock digger and rock breaker. Every spring till he got too old, he used to build a piece of wall with stones and rocks from a meadow or pasture and thus make many spears of grass grow where none grew before. It is a keen satisfaction. In a few days now [crossed out: wh] we have made room for several more grape vines by digging out the place rock where it came to the surface. Webroke the sleep of long ages of those rocks, sometimes with bare and wedges sometimes with dynamite. Where the sun had not shone in some millions of years we let it in. In seams all but invisible we find fibres of roots and now and then a lichenous growth merely discoloring the stone. How life will squeeze into the narrowest quarters. April 30. Sunday, Julian and I spend the last of the April days worthily by a tramp through "Bear Fly" to Sherwoods. Start about 9 A.M. Day bright and bracing, woods flooded with sun light. How good the turf feels to my feet as we pass through the Gill fields! Two children, girl an boy, playing in Gordons field, wandering about in an adventurous kind of way as children will in spring, peering into pools, throwing sticks, looking down on the R.R. track, and presently gathering trout lillies (adders tongues). We go through Brookmans road to black creek near the bridge a bittern or night herron spring out of a low hemlock and hurries off. After crossing the bridge we presently turn to the right into the bushes and begin making our way towards the Bear Fly. Sharp rocky crests alternate with deep sunken valleys. The face of the land is like a tempestuous sea suddenly congealed. Now we are in the trough of the wave, then on its sharp bristling crest.Now and then from some higher crest we catch a glimpse of Sherwoods hill our objective point. In one of the little valleys we come upon a black swift running creek which checks us for some time. After a while we make a passage over by the aid of large stones rolled into it from the near rocks. No large trees, but a small thick second growth. How beautiful the hepaticas, family grouped of them everywhere, blue, pink, white, purple -- like bevies of happy faced girls on their way to church or to a pic-nic. What a social flower this is! Then the dicentra too -- fairy clothes lines strung along the face of the rocks, and hung with yellow-white "breeches" or were they strung to the "hoisting-poles"? After much wandering we come out upon a small abandoned farm -- the walls of the house of stone still intact. Here we prowl about for some time. All the wood work rotted away. What a curious interest about an old house, it appeals so to the imagination! Will my house be thus some day? Then we press on along a wood road, toward Sherwoods hill; we have an adventure with a black snake that escapes us, then flush a grouse, then strike the Bear Fly swamp, through which we make our way with difficulty, nearly dry-shod. Then we wind in and out of the bushes till fnally we begin to mount S's hill, at last we are on the top and look down into S's chimney on the other side. We shout to him and tell him we have scaled his works from the rear and demand his instant surrender. He calls to his wife; they wave to us and laugh, and presently wego down a winding stairway of rock. He calls the sheep; and ewes and lambs are all about us bleating and making a music welcome to my ears. We spend a delightful day; the place is like a bit of poetry, and S. is a poet at heart, and often in speech. The lake draws J. and he rows on it and is loth to leave it. On our return, S. shows us a new way through the woods; we find some very fine arbutus and have an interesting walk. S. shows us a peach tree 40 years old in an old stone heap in an abandoned field. A day long to be remembered. May 1st Cloudy, chilly; no sun during the day. Rained last night; with thunder; heavy shower. Wood-thrush this morning in Gordons grounds. House wren also. A chilly May day. 2d Rain again in the night and thunder. Clears off by 10 A.M., and becomes much warmer. Maple buds just bursting; cherry buds look very full. Currant stems out of the bud, but very short yet. Vineyards ploughed up to the garden. First herring for Julian last night. 3 Cloudy, chilly, with slow drizzling rain from East4 the storm coming up the coast yesterday developed into a hell of rain; poured down all night and most of the day. 5 or 6 inches of water; no such rain since the deluge of June 3d, '91. Every creek a torrent, every spring run a brawling brook. Some damage to my vineyard, worst in peach orchard. [crossed out: Rain] Wind in North and N.E. How human the weather is! Excess breed excess till a very frenzy of rain [crossed out: follows] succeeds. The limit of moderation is passed and all reserve broken through, a very riot and debauch of the elements is pretty sure to follow. If it once gets too dry in nine cases out of ten, it will get terribly dry. If it once gets too wet it is bound to get wetter and wetter, till Nature fairly exhausts herself. 5. Cooler, partly cloudy. The earth like an over saturated sponge. A sweet pungent odor this morning on the west wind; the first breath of May. Warbler-time is at hand. Saw the blue-winged yellow warbler just now by the study. Never identified him before. 8 Very cool May so far. A light frost last night. No fruit blossoms yet, except currants. Much cloud. North and East winds. Maples in bloom. Ground very wet. -- The greater man is, the more distasteful is praise and flattery to him. If there were such a being as men call God, how sick and disgusted he must have got long ago, by the cringing and abject attitude of mankind before him, [crossed out: fla] fullsome flattery and insincere praise, and all for selfish purposes. As if I were to praise the President because I wanted an office of him. The attitude of the Greeks toward their gods was far better. God must love those who defy him.-- I find that when I speak in a certain key, the sheet iron hood to my open fireplace responds or echoes. To all other tones it is silent. How true it is that to awaken an echo in men's hearts and minds you must speak in their key. You may speak too high or too low for [crossed out: them] you public. In Mammoth Cave I noted the same thing. How the walls at a certain point resounded like great musical chords when you spoke in [crossed out: the] a certain pitch of voice. Only this one tone awoke a response. This analogy is stricly true. The same law in both cases.10 Rare May days, perfect. Every hour a new delight; a tender green awakening over all the greens. How the river sparkles in the soft morning light. Nearly all the birds here except cuckoo. The white crowned sparrows, sing Oh, feu- fee-u, fee, fee, with indescribable plaintiveness and sweetness. Promises of a tremendous currant crop. Such days in my youth on the old farm I would be spreading dung, or knocking "tirds" and looking wistfully towards the horizon. Oh, that I could go back into that enchanted land! But we neverknow it is enchanted when we are in it. Over those hills now the plough is turning the furrow as I saw it in my youth; the woods and fields look the same. Yet how all is changed because the eye that sees it is changed; is getting old and sated. Bobolinks yesterday and to-day in song as they pass overhead.
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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 int

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