May 10. Hiram has been with me the past four days; the longer he stays the more pleasure I have in his visit. This is the 8th or 9th time he has visited me in his life; once at Marlboro in 1861, once at Orange or Newark N.J. in 1859; twice in Washington in 1965 and 67, and four or five times here, the last being in '83. He seems well, but can not walk as he used to. He goes with me over to the swamp twice and over to P. He is content to sit about or to snooze in the summer house. Weather very hot all the time -- from 85, to 88. This morning I start for N.Y. and Hiram goes home
Spend the night at Mrs Haggins -- a fine dinner and people in the evening.
11th Go out to Plainfield to-day to visit Mrs McCarthy -- the widow of my old school mate who died last winter.
Very hot. a long drive about the country with talk of the departed. After dinner Mrs McC. shows me many photos of my boyhood friend; but I cannot see him in them; then she shows me an old daguerreotype, taken shortly after I knew him. This brings him to me vividly; it seems as much myself as it does him -- it is my past, my boyhood. I cannot cease to look at it, and I bring it home with me.
Pass the night with the Chubbs in Brooklyn.
12 Cold and rainy, a great change
13. Reach home this morning; very cold and ice and frost in places. Quite a fine rain yesterday all the forenoon, was much needed. Apple bloom nearly all off. It has passed too quick Grape arms from 6 to 10 inches. Foliage nearly all out.
18 A cold and frosty week; fruit much damaged in some local-ities. No injury here. On the 16th a cold rain all the after-noon, about 3/4 inch of water. To day bright and lovely; a lot of Vassar girls to go to the woods. Millions of blue.birds must have perished last winter in the South. No other species of birds seems to have suffered so. [crossed out: A] In N. C. a martin box blew down and 20 dead blue-birds were found in it. In a hollow stump 6 were found. From Wis. to Me. a great
scarcity of blue-birds is reported. More here yet. Every day I go to the muck swamp; it is a great boon. I suffer it is the wildness and seclusion of it that attracts me so. It is an escape from the tame and humdrum.
19. Cloudy and cool this morning, threatens rain.
23. Bright and warm after three cold cloudy days. Make a boat voyage down Black Creek from bridge at Centrevill with Booth and Lowne. An enjoyable day. Two starlings nests, one redstarts nest; Start up a pair of mallard ducks, and one bittern. Hear birth water-thrushes, the mourning warble and veery.
27. Rain this A.M. but not enough. Pretty warm since my last entry.
Later -- Rain turned out a fine one -- nearly an inch of water.
30 Very hot -- 92 in shade.
31. " " 93 " " Part of the day in the woods.
June 1 Heat continues -- Mrs and Mr Frank Baker come at night.
2. Very hot, 94 degrees in shade; but lovely weather. Frank leaves to-night 3d Still hot. 94 degrees -- the 6th day of great heat all over the country -- breaks the record. Cooler at night. 4 Cloudy and cooler; threatens rain from S.W.
5. Still cloudy and cooler. 6 Quite a fine rain last night, grapes blooming
7. Very windy from North. Wordens breaking badly. very cool last night.
8 Clear, and warmer; ideal June weather, tho' pretty dry. All kinds of grapes blooming; grass all cut and part of it in.
11 Clear and warm. Getting very dry. --Montaigne says "The most beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so." This is indeed the main matter -- capability of instruction. People capable of instruction are sure to become more or less instructed in the course of life -- no matter what their circumstances are.
13. It has been trying to rain for 2 or 3 days from S.W. A depression coming up from Va. This P.M. 5 o'clock came a sharp dash, then another heavier, and spliced on to this a third very heavy -- rained over one hour, about 1 1/2 inches of water; washed the vineyard on side-hill above ice house. Rain seems to have been general from Washington to Albany and west to Rochester. Much needed, but fell too fast. All the moisture in the atmosphre seemed to give way at times. Grapes about done blooming; finished spraying for first time in forenoon.
14 Clear and warm; probably more rain before night.
I do not seem to be getting much out of these June days now half gone. Every day I go to the muck swamp, every day I listen to the birds, every day I sit in the summer house and look ong and wistfully upon the river and the landscape beyond; every day I think of father and mother and the old home, every day I wish and wish for I know not what. Every day I try to read in [crossed out: the] books but feel only a languid interest. I think in living here I always have the feeling of the exile I am away from my own, tho' I hardly know what my own is. As nearly as I can define it it is my family and the old home. The past, oh, the past.
16. Warm, quiet, delightful June days, perfect.
22. The summer solstice; A damp cloudy, muggy day; a fine shower in the small hours of the morning -- 2 hours rain, much needed. The week has been dry and warm. First shipment of currants yesterday -- about 1 ton. Later -- rain does not seem to have reached P. or Rondout.
24. Warm -- boat race at P. Shower at 5 P.M. Rather heavy [crossed out: at] here, ground well wetted now. 26 Finished currants to-day. Picnic at the island. Overcast and humid. 4500 lbs of currants. 28 Light rain yesterday. Heavy shower this P.M. no thunder. Not needed here. Sultry.
29. Warm. Start for Snyder Hollow Julian and I. Walk up from Phoenicia. Reach our old camp at noon with a string of trout. Cabin burned up. Extemporize a tent with our canvass. Heavy shower on Sunday, our roof is perfect. Monday eve Mr Binder comes. Tuesday a cool lovely day, have a head ache which continues on Wednesday, on this day Julian and Mr B. go up the W[crossed out: h]ittenberg and are back at 1 1/2 P.M. Mr B. returns to W.P. Thursday the 4th J and I fish the Esopus for cod, trout, but find none. Rain at night and all day on Friday the 5th and very heavy at night. We have trout once each day and strawberries or raspberries at every meal. Return home on the 6th Saturday. Showery; threatened with a hell of rain as 6 years ago. The rain of Friday came from off the Atlantic and drifted westeward, contrary to all laws of storms. It did the same in 1889.
The air here seems heavy and thick and foul compared with the air of Snyder Hollow. This one breathes reluctantly; that he takes in eagerly.
9 Muggy, sticky, very damp weather the past few days, threatens rain from S.W. to-day. No rot or mildew among the grapes as yet. Terrible storms in the west with loss of life.
10 A change, air clear, cool and sparkling, wind north. Change began at 5 P.M. yesterday, air and sky seem as if washed.
14 At Roxbury. Came up here yesterday -- light rain in the morning along the river; only a sprinkle here. Never saw it so dry here in my life; pastures brown, hay hardly 1/3 of a crop. Grasshoppers large and very abundant. No rain here to wet the ground since spring. The old home looks as good as ever, tho' the terrible drought almost makes me sick.
16 Cloudy, south wind, a slow light rain that barely makes the eaves drip. Some curse seems upon the land. Very cool. The rain so far (9 A.M) only a mockery. I doubt if I can stay here long, unless I can get to writing.
Drought thoughts: To believe that there is any Power that interferes with the natural order of events, and changes or modifies them in any way with reference to man, is to believe upon faith and against reason and experience. If there is such a power we are forced to the conclusion either that it is not omnipotent, or else that it is cruel, capricious, and inconstant beyond anything the history of mankind can show -- feeding the raven but allowing peoples and races to perish of starvation mindful of the sparrow that falls to the ground, but not your child that falls under the electric car. Out upon it! There is no such monster in the universe. What then is the truth about these things? The truth is that the order of the universe ii invariable that is, that under the same conditions the same results always follow; that the order of the universe is not directed to man anymore than it is to mice, that he take his chances with everything else, that no exception is ever made in his favor, that he is shaped to Nature, and not the reverse, that drought comes to one part of the country and flood to another as the result of abscure natural law, etc. Just now the grasshoppers are having their innings and are literally devouring the land, everything has favored them and they doubtless [crossed out: call] see only smiles in the face of Providence. Next season perhaps other and less friendly conditions will prevail and their race will not prosper.
July 20. Very hot day. Light shower in P.M. Curtis and I return from Edens whither we went
yesterday. E. getthing better. Hiram well. I was him in the meadow loading hay as I have seen him so many times in my youth. He always loaded all the hay, and built all the stacks. -- The swallows skim in and out the great barn door of the half filled barn, uttering their child like twitter. Now they drive at the white cat, falling toward her from 20 or 30 feet in the air, uttering their chiding sleet, sleet. The cat regards them not. She goes her way like W.W. amid the sleet sleet of hostile critics. The grasshoppers crawl up the side of the barn till it is speckled nearly to the peak.
-- Religious belief, as an element in social development undoubtedly has this advantage over science and philosophy, that it involves the human will and leads more to action. Reflection, speculation, rationcination are [crossed out: ???] not favorable to action, they leave us with our hands folded. To will and to do counts for more in human progress than to think and to know. Wrong action is undoubtedly better on the whole, than no action. It sets the currents going. But science is akin to religion in this respect that it favors action (?)
24. Still dry, dry, dry, and cool.
27 A little rain to-day from the S.W. Binder and I lay in File Corbins old barn on the hay and looked out into the broad fields and the drifting clouds; at that moment
my vineyards were being devestated by a terrible storm of hail and rain. While at supper a few hours later a telegram was handed me which said "All your grapes destroyed. Come home at once." It fairly took my breath away. What a cruel, brutal blow! I had all I could do to stand up under it. Little sleep that night. Cannot put the thought from me. One prolonged agony till I reach home at 7 P.M. on Sunday and find it not so bad as reported. -- May save half of them or more, tho' probably half their market value gone. Vineyard terribly washed also. Probably 3 inches of water fell in less than 1/2 hour. Two clouds or storms met and fought it out just over my vineyard Each cloud apparently gutted the other and one came down as hail, the other as rain all in a heap. No damage done over the river, or north or south or west of us. The larger grapes suffered the most. Delawares the least.
29. Forlorn and cast down, tho' I shall survive it.
31. Mrs. B. and Julian return to-day. Very cool; report a fine rain at Roxbury at last.
Aug 3d Warmer, but still cool. The bruised grapes are dropping off. My own wounds are healing slowly. A few Moores Early beginning to ripen, but oh, such a sorry lot! The grapes were the finest I ever had, all kinds.
10 Very warm past three days, with light showers. Van B. shipping Champions since 5th
11 Very moist and hot. New leaves coming out on the hail cut grape vines. Delawares color-ing here and there.
12 Heavy shower yesterday P.M. and again in the night, about an inch of water; very muggy. First Moors Early to-day. -- Nearly every day I walk over to my muck swamp for a taste of the wild unfamil[crossed out: l]iar. The walk through the woods, the glimpses, the vistas the sudden revelation of the bit of prairie surrounded by gray rocky arms, Amasa swinging his bogging hoe in the solitude, the fat marrowy soil, the sitting on a fern hassock and the talk and gossip, then the spring and the long delicious draught, repeated again and again, then the Scotch caps and black berries; then the slow loitering and browsing about -- how sweet it all is! I look away to the west and north and there are the walls and faces of gray lichen covered rocks; I look at my feet and there is the [???] black humus, meadow as an ash heap; I look away to the west and north and there is the distant landscape with farms and woodland, and beyond all the blue curves of the Catskills. Then I come back refreshed.
14 Pretty warm. First Wordens to-day.
18. Fine shower last night. Hot to-day.
20. Cool wave yesterday and to-day. -- In your born Catholic the dogmas of his Church are a grown part of him, his mind has shaped itself to them, they are like the thongs and skeweres in the lips and ears of certain savages the vital parts have made a place for these foreign substances.
George Mivart is such a Catholic. This is the way he begins a sentence in a recent article, "About God and about the most mysterious dogmas which he has designed to reveal to us in Chris-tianity etc" Doesnt that have a Catholic sound? He says these truths can only be partially known by us -- and yet he accepts them as truths. How do we know they are truths? An authority of course. These "mysterious dogmas" must be swallowed like pills with out mastication. Is he never tempted to bite into one and see for a truth if it be not a mere shell? a lie?
24 Pretty hot. To Twilight Park this morning. Speak there at night in parlour of Lodge End Hotel. Do very well. A lovely spot.
25 A bright lovely day. What superb views on every hand. [crossed out: Ba]
26 Home again and at the grapes. A losing battle.
Sept. 1 Bright and cool as one week ago. A light rain yesterday; getting very dry all over the country. Onlly one ton of Delawares off so far. A hot wave n middle of week. -- The difference between the vital and the mechanical is the difference between good literature and bad, or no literature at all.
4 Olly and Johnny came to day from the old home; hurrying off the grapes with all our might. One and 1/2 tons is about all we can do with 6 women and 5 men, besides Julian and myself.
7 Go to West Point with Olly and John and back on Powell
Dry and warm. The grape racket very trying. A dull market and bruised and disfigured grapes, four times as much work
to market them as usual. 9th Olly and John go home to-day A fine shower at night, the first for weeks; remarkable electric display: Shower very heavy out home.
11 Very hot -- 90 in the coolest spot out of doors. Send off 3300 lbs of grapes. 12 Very hot still.
13. A change to cool. No grape cutting to-day. Markets too flat. Day bright and lovely. A pair of blue-birds on the 11th and one bird about Aug 20th Sept 30 -- A dry Sept and very warm.
The 20th, 21st, 22d, 23 very hot, 93 on the north end of the house. Hiram came on the 21st and stayed till Friday, the 27th. Picked up wonderfully while here; his eyes got well and he improved every way, great pleasure to have him with me again. We went to the swamp almost daily. He wants to come down and live with me and I want to have him; do not yet see how we will manage it. A fine shower last night. Cool and bright to-day with falling temperture. Plenty of Niagaras still hanging.
Have heard blue-birds in the air many times lately.
Oct. 1 Very cool, a frost but for the wind.
Sunday Oct 6. The end of a cool bright week, dry, dry. Frost (light) several nights. Hard blue skies, north wind. Lovely days for the open air; working at the swamp every day. -- The final test of any [crossed out: book] author is do we return to him? do we come back after a time or after years and re-read him with fresh pleasure? If not, he is not destined to live. About the only N. E. authors I ever return to are Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. I cannot go back to Lowells poetry, or to Whittiers or Longfellows, except to a few single poems. I return to Wordsworth, to Tennyson, to Burns, to Milton. I re-read Boswell every 8 or 10 years. I cannot re-read much of Carlyle; the road he drives me over is needlessly rough, I can always re-read Danas Two Years before the mast with fresh pleasure. I have read no novel that I can return to. Books that fuse with our life, that color or flavor our days -- to these we return. To do this a book must have heart as well as intellect. I forgot Holmes. One can go back to him a little. I have lately re-read parts of the Autocrat, with a curious pathetic interest -- read it in the old Atlantic where I first saw it 35 years ago. Some of it is good, some of it very cheap.
13. Something like a "line storm" nearly 2 inches of water, first from S.W. then from N.E; rather warm; still raining and blowing. Cold wave a few days ago; hurt the celery on the swamp and on low lands. Coldest on the morning of the 10th. Evidently the white plume celery will not stand more than 5 or 6 degrees of frost. Began raining yesterday near 11
Myron Benton came Monday night, and returned again Tuesday night, from P. where he was summoned on the jury. "What do you think of my coming back" he said to Mrs B. half apologetically as he met her in the dining room [crossed out: Th] Tuesday night. "I expected you would" she replied rather severly, "I know that jury would not keep you in P." I was very glad to see Myron again. An old friend recovers for one for the time, so much of the past; the dead days come to live again in him.
Oct 18. Lovely day, not a cloud; sharp frost last night; go to Julian's rock and to celery swamp with Binder and the Gordon girls A cool week with light rain part of one day. Hear and see bluebirds daily.
19 Lovely day and quite warm; go to Albany and then to Indian Ladder with Miss Warner and Miss Barstow. Stupendous scenery -- am greatly astonished by it. We walk under and over the cliffs and along the dizzy brink; have never seen anything just like it; feel well repaid.
20.
Home to Roxbury to-day, bright and sharp. Find them all well.

21.
Snow squalls to-day -- a white wash of snow over the landscape. Cold at night.


22 Bright and warmer. Johnson comes to-day. We go over to the shcool house. J. makes pictures etc. I sit in my old seat once more. It seems incredible that these children are having just such times as I had, and that life and the worlds looks to them as it did to me at that age, but I suppose it is so. At night J. interviews me on my youth etc.
23. Fine day and cool. J. leaves in P.M. and Curtis and I go over to Edens Find him much worse. Very pale he sits there in his chair by the table. Not thin in flesh but pale and weak. I fear more than ever that it is death. Hiram looks well and seems cheerful.
24 Go with Hiram to see Edens new house; very sad in walking about its unfinished rooms. He said he guessed he was building it for some one else. We walk back through the fields in the golden sunlight. In afternoon drive to Homers. We pass the place where my
great grandfather lived and died nearly 80 years ago.
Jane is alone when we arrive. She looks well, but she has a terrible hard barren life; she said she often wished it was all over with, Homer is so helpless and I fear so ugly and ungrateful. He comes in at dusk, and seems about as one year ago.
25. Drive back home in fore noon. Bright and sharp.
When we left Edens yesterday, he came out and stood in the sun light [crossed out: and sees] to see us off: how deadly pale he looked. Shall I ever see him again in life? He said the doctor told him in the spring that he had better get his business matters in shape. He said he told him he could not scare him.
26 Back home this A.M. Sour looks and angry words in the kitchen.
A cold week for October; froze at night.
27 Bright mild day, with some rain and thunder at night. 28 Warm and lovely, getting cooler in P.M. Nov 3d Bright, clear, still perfect Nov. day, air sharp and exhilarating. A visit from Prof. Triggs of Chicago Univer.
sity. The wrath of Mrs B. rises high because I have company; give her a piece of my mind. Much long and delightful talk on Whitman with T.
4 Another bright, quiet, lovely day; frost last night.
7 Still the mild fair weather continues; wind southerly no frost for some nights. Bees lively every day. Two days ago found a wood frog in his hiber-naculum. Blue birds every day.
9. End of warm week -- 70 and over. In walking or working one sweats as in summer. Cloudy with mist and light rain to-day. Cool wave coming. -- I do not think of any writer or poet of to-day in America or in England in whose page there is any cry -- either of joy or of pain. There is no burden in the song, and no anguish in the prose.
Mr Howells is perhaps the most in earnest of American writers at present -- he does feel the wrong and injustice of our social organization Yes, and so does Hamlin Garland. But the mass of our current poetry is mere froth -- there is no deep feeling or seriousness back of it. There was a cry in Arnold, in both his prose and verse, largely a cry of pain and regret. There is now and then a revolutionary cry in Swinburne, but mostly does he cry to hear the echo. There is no cry in Morris and Dobson and Watson that I know of. The religioius cry is in In Memoriam and others of Tennysons works. There is the cry of Joy in Keats and of wrath and scorn in Byron. There is the patriotic and humanitarian cry in Whittier and the cry of strong exultant self-hood in Whitman. Is there the cry of a lost night bird in Poe? No cry in Stoddard or Baynard Taylor or our women poets, tho, there is an intense and piercing note at times in Miss Thomas, and in Mrs Piatt. A real cry always reaches and moves us, even a cry of despair. What we cant endure in this perpetual feigning -- these make-believe joys, these make believe sorrows. Ah, well, I am only after all indicating the difference between deep men and shallow, between men of words and men of power. When a poets earnestness reaches to a cry, we are sure to heed him.
15. Fine rain all fore noon from South, over an inch of water. So far Nov. has been mild like Oct.
16 Bright, still, mild.
Health good these days; sleep well 7 hours a stretch. Mrs B. very belligerent as usual. -- When I was visiting Jane in Oct. she told me this about grandfather Kelly's death. She was there at Uncle Martins at the time. It was in the summer I think. Grandfather and grand mother had the little back room. Jane went in to see [crossed out: Grand] them. Grandfather sat with his bible open on his knees before him, and Jane says seemed rather dull and abstracted. He called her Janett as usual and talked a little. She went out, and in a few moments a noise and commotion was heard in grandfathers room. He had got up and gone into the little bed room and had fallen upon the floor, probably from a stroke. They lifted him upon the bed and he was dead in a few moments. In the great economy of Nature, no more than a leaf falling from a tree in autumn. He was 88 I think and had been a boy soldier under Washington. I taught my first school that summer -- in Tongore, Olive, Ulster, Co. I do not remember the last time I ever saw him -- probably that spring in March, as I went by way of Uncle Martins when I set out to look up a school. I stayed there over night and he took me down to the stage at Griffins Corners in the morning.
20. Rainy. This day I go to Brooklyn to speak in the after-noon to the girls at Packer Inst. Do not talk very well. Not well pleased with myself. In the evening speak at the Brooklyn institute -- a large hall, a large audience. I speak on the art of seeing things, with marked success. My first real success on the platform. I am tickled with myself. I find the large audience, the large hall etc. like swimming in deep water, tis very easy. Had I been told before hand what was before me, I should never have dared to [crossed out: have] undertake[crossed out: n] it. Mr Proctor was enthusiastic; said no speaker since Curtis has so pleased a Brooklyn audience We were just the opposite, he said; Curtis'es was art, mine was nature. I told him I was a green horn, "then remain a green horn all your life" said he. I talked 1 hour and 20 minutes. "Stopped just in time" said Chubb. No doubt a genuine success.
In the morning I go with Chubb to the High School and speak to the boys 10 or 15 minutes. In the evening to a Whitman dinner where I speak again but not with much fullness and go -- am not well prepared. Much colder this day.
23d Saturday. Stayed with Proctor last night and heard the nightingale it sang well he said, but did not fully let itself out, like the wild bird. Its song was a brilliant medley -- no theme that I could detect, like the larks song in this respect; all the notes of the field and forest the gift of this bird. But I cannot judge its song till I hear it in nature where it belongs. How can one tell in a room in a city house?
24 Rain to-day -- go to Plymouth Church and hear Abbott. Eloquence a little perfunctory a little of the sin of which
most preachers have so much and whereof "a little more than a little is by much too much" Why not speak naturally and just as you feel? Why be moved untill your theme moves you. Let a man be eloquent when he cant help it. Yet Abbott is a fine preacher and a liberal growing man. He has shown himself capable of development.
25. Home to-day at 10.16 a.m. 26, 27, 28, 29, at home at work on the house in the woods. Frosty nights. 29 Go to N.Y. to-day. Am the guest of Mrs Talmadge on Park Ave. A pleasant family. 30 Cold and clear. Go to the Plymptons and in P.M. am the guest of the womens university Club; meet and talk to a
great many
pleasant women. A spread dinner at P's at night.
Dec 1st Mild. Go to hear Dr Parkhurst. Not a great preacher, not a deeply religious soul. at the Plymptons meet Miss Pollock from St Paul who was on the train that escaped from the great fire in Wisconsin in the fall of 94. I shall never forget her recital. It was Dantesque. A fine person, with a soul too big for her frail body. 2d Rain, rain; home this morning. 3d At work on the chimney of the new house. 12 Dec has been getting colder and colder till this
morning mercury is at 10 much floating ice in river; No snow yet and no rain since the 1st. Slow work on the chimney too cold, wind N.E. The ground aches with cold; needs a coverlid of snow.
13. A severe cold wave this morning or last night -- down to zero, and windy and piercing all day. 14 Down to 10 above. River full of floating ice. 16 To N.Y. this morning to meet Hamlin Garland; a fine fellow with the western heartiness and good fellow ship A
real democrat; the real Whitman blood in his veins. I believe he will do great things if he lives.
17. Home to-night from N.Y. milder
18 Begin work on the chimney again. Weather mild and lovely; roads very dusty.
19 Another Indian summer day from S.W.
20 Still warmer. 60 in the coolest spot. I sweat at my work. How I enjoy it. Chimney nearly to the roof. Will and I are pusing it up; happy all day long. Nothing like work And then that spot (Foot cliffs?) has such a charm to me. 92 years ago to-day, my father was born. I do not forget that in my work; nor the death of mother 15 years ago. How cold and wintry it was then!
22 Sunday. Our week of Indian summer apparently ended last night in a sharp shower in the middle of the night, with a change of wind. Bright this morning and growing cooler.
Worked at the chimney 4 days. May finish it in one more day. I predict an open winter.
25 Xmas. Warm, overcast, still no frost for several nights Finished chimney yesterday. Monday the 23rd the boys came up from P. and we had a pic-nic in the open air.
27. Rain and violent wind last night; clear and colder this morning. 28 Frost last night; bright and pleasant to-day; a season like that of 89 only less rain; no snow yet.
29 Froze a little last night; nearly clear and mild to-day. Remarkable weather, ice nearly all gone from ponds and river. At night I sit by my fire and read Arnolds letters. It is an Education in simplicity and common sense to read them There was probably the least confusion in that mans head [crossed out: of] than in any other head of his times. The lines are all so clear, and straight, and so strong. He says in 63, he read 100 lines of Homer daily to keep from putrefaction. What did Homer read to keep from putrefaction? But H. was not school inspector and did not have to correct 60 examinations papers daily. He had Greek life and nature, and real events.
Dec 31. Rain and wind last night from S.W. Madam [crossed out: made] heard her washing snapping in the wind and made me get up at 3 o'clock and bring the things in. The rain was warm and driving from S.W.
Clearing this morning and growing cold -- a cold wave. Not a flake of snow yet. Ice all gone. -- Lowell had a good deal of power but it did not work along special lines as did Arnolds. He did not stand for any one thing as A. stands for clear intelligence and fitness. L. had no cause, no message, and he occasionally slumped dreadfully on grounds of good taste, (as I do.) A's power of clear seeing and right feeling never fail him for a moment.
News of the death of Angie Carroll this morning casts a sudden gloom upon me. Typhoid fever four times in succession since middle of October, and is at last taken by pneumonia. Seems as if some malignant power was bent on her destruction, and at last was compelled to play a new card to accomplish it. Her sweet face and gentle ways -- how sad, how sad! Still in the morning of her days.
-- The true writer or poet always makes you feel that he is walking upon real ground.
-- Why do imitations displease us? One likes the taste of fish, but not in a duck. We want things at first hand. -- I suppose it is the taste of
raw fish that we dislike. Cooking the duck does not cook the fish.
1896 January 5. A cold wave yesterday and last night, down to 8 degrees this morning. The river again covered with great floating island of new smooth ice, not a flake of snow on the ground; only a few flakes in the air yet this winter.
6. Colder and colder -- 12 below zero this morning. 7 below at noon, clear as crystal; the sun seems of ice, his beams like icicles, a penetrating wind; the naked earth cracking open, ice [crossed out: sl] on river stationary the patches of open water steam as if the water was hot. The unclad hills, how they must ache. News this morning that my old friend Hazen is dead, gone before me into the silent land; died yesterday, a frank ingenuous man, like a child, quite unconscious of self, a terrible talker, prodigious memory, learned in the scriptures, but chiefly to point out their absurdities, or the absurdities of theologians with regard to them, a terrible asker of questions, insatiable curiosity, fine botanist, fine geologist, tender hearted as a girl, not much worldly success, always friendly to all, never moped or sullied I think, quite a bore at times by reason of his hobbies, but a good soul whom I shall much miss from the world, tho' I saw him only after intervals of years. Always intended to visit him at Saratoga, but the auspicious moment never came. He visited us last fall on his return home from Mr Donalds funeral. Skeptical about all the teachings of the Church, and yet of such as he is the kingdom of heaven. Farewell, farewell, we have passed many summer and winter days to-gether, but now the end has come. A long farewell.
8 Cold continues -- 4 below this morning, 6 or 7 degrees below yesterday -- a couple of inches of light snow -- the first of the season. Clear and frigid to-day.
9. Overcast, a slow cold gentle snow nearly all day, mercury 10 this morning. Walk over to martins and back -- 3 inches of snow, very dry and light. Long, long thoughts of father who died 12 years ago to-day, a space of time that in memory is reduced to a mere span.
17. Clear, strong, quiet winter weather the past week; mercury near zero several mornings. Only a little snow which mixes up with the dirt beneath it on the roads. Heard a robin in the woods two days ago.
At work every afternoon with Van on the slab house -- slab rest -- [crossed out: eve] Reading Arnolds letter at night, not a brilliant or witty thing in them, and yet they are very good and valuable, so unlike Lowells
and yet far better I think.
January 23. Fair day, roads bare and smooth, mercury 19 this morning. Since the cold snap of two weeks ago, weather has been mild and agreeable, no wind, no storms, no cold. Flocks of pine grossbeaks every day, outlook for ice poor.
26. Three days of soft cloudy weather with light rain and fog, and litle hail and snow. No wind; sky stagnant. Work in "Slab-sides" every afternoon.
31. Bright and sharp, mercury at 18 this morning; ice boats on the river; roads bare and nearly dry, a skim of snow here and there in the fields. January, with the exception of one cold spell
has been like a quiet well behaved March.
Feb 2d Very bright; off for Boston to-day at 10 a.m. train. Reach B. at 9 P.M.
3d Speak at Lowell to Middlesex Womens Club at 4 P.M. Do fairly well.
5th at Mrs Ole Bulls in Cambridge Fine house, fine people. [crossed out: at] musical at night, am introduced to many people. Miss Longfellow, some Harvard professors etc.
6th A furious rain storm nearly all day; very violent in afternoon, torrents of water; extended all over the country; a hurricane in N.Y. thunder and lightning at West Park; I walk out and look at Higginsons house, where he lies ill; felt much sympathy towards him as I stood there in the wet slippery street under the dripping skies. Then to Lowells house, when I again paused with long long thoughts. Speak at night before the Procopeia Society; rain stopped at dark as I predicted it would.
7th Very bright and spring like; go to the Longfellow house with Mrs Bulls friends (2 girls) and am shown about; a charming impressive place. But I asked myself, Do really great poems ever come out of such houses -- such a correct, blameless life, so conventional, so made up?
In evening speak on Whitman before the Metaphysical Society in Association Hall; a fine audience and more appreciation than I expected. A marked success I thought, much more so than I dared hope. I was conscious of speaking strongly and earnestly. But in afternoon came near collapsing under the strain; I feared I should fail. But when I got face to face with the enemy my courage rose.
as a soldier I should die before the battle began: if I only lived till the fight opened and I could see the foe, I should rush in fire and sword.
8 Come to Hadley to-night and stop with Clifton Johnson till Monday morning.
11 Reach home to-day at 10 a.m. The same old atmosphere of rangle jangle. Mrs B. mad because I went and mad because I came home. 4 inhes of snow on Sunday.
15. Storms nearly every other day light snow or light rain; not cold.
Every night after supper I walk over to the station in the darkness always with long sad thoughts mostly retrospective and centering about the old home. Last night the thoughts of father was with me all the way over and back, the thought of how long he had been in his grave; that all his
neighbors with two or three exceptions were dead that all the members of his church in whose society he had so much comfort were dead, that his generation was nearly all gone, and that my generation [crossed out: was] is rapidly passing off the scene. I see the world as it was in fathers time, and all the people he knew and had to do with; then all is changed and new set and new interests are on the stage. How soon others will see their past in me and in my day!
Extract from a letter to Mr Stedman Feb 16: "Unless we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself (and it is probably here that you and I come in conflict) I dont see what we are going to do with him. From his own point of view and from the logic of his work he does not violate nature, but honors Feb 18. Cold wave yesterday mercury 10 below. Cold to-day Start for Brooklyn at 11. Speak before the teachers training school at 4, on Observation of Nature. I am not well and do not speak as well as on some other occasions.
19 Go to New Haven to speak before the Phi Beta Cappa Society on Whitman. Am dreadfully scared and worried as usual, as I sit in my room at Hotel, it seems utterly impossible for me to read that lecture. I could fly to the moon easier. But when the hour strikes and I find myself face to face with the enemy my courage and confi-dence mount[crossed out: s], and I acquit myself entirely to my satisfaction I speak about one third of it and read the rest. A fine audinece and appreciative of me, if not of my theme. This is the way I began, "I recd a letter from an old Yale boy the other day, Mr E. C. Stedman, whom I trust you all know and love. Referring to my proposed visit here and the theme upon which I was to speak, he said, 'I want to assure you that the Yale spirit is sturdy, democratic, unaffected, American, and so 'cos-mopolitan as to be at home even in its own country! (applause) Well, I come to you with a theme that ought to appeal to all these traits. If it does not the fault is in me and not in it. Mr S. has himself written wisely and appreciatively of W. Let me take this as a good omen, as a sign that the Yale spirit and the Whitman spirit are not so far apart as they might seem to be. But if it is so, if I have not your sympathy, then there is all the more reason why I should be true to myself and speak my own honest conviction about the man and his work. If indeed the Yale spirit is resolute, self-reliant, unaffected; if it is done with sugar plums, if it has finished with illusions, if it can face the realities of life and the world, it ought to find much in W. to which it can respond. The example he set us of cheerful self-trust, of unshakable determination to follow the inward light and go his own way in the world etc. ought to be an inspiration to every young man." etc. etc. If I had it to do over again I would make it more of a popular lecture by dwelling upon W. as a man, I would make it more suggestive and a less argumentative. The young men showed me many attentions.
20.
Come to Bridgeport in the forenoon and spend the day and night with Smith and Emma. Very gland to see them again. E. looks well, S. getting fat. A quiet humdrum life they lead, the same routine winter and summer, year in and year out.

21.
Back to N.Y. to-day; stay there till 25th See many people and get very tired. No rest for me in the great hard roaring Babylon.


25 Go to Stamford and speak before a fine audience on Nature with marked success. Speak 1 hour and 10 minutes, and the audience is disappointed when I stop. I see it when it is too late. They linger in their seats. The principle of the High School says he thought I talked about 15 minutes. They would have stood an hour and a half and still been keen for more.
26. Visit Helen Keller this morning with Warner. A visible soul, am strangely affected by her; can hardly keep from tears; she repeats my poem "Waiting". Says she believes it all. So happy, almost ecstatic, all soul and feeling, quite handsome, except her eyes. Full grown I should say. A phenomenon indeed.
Home at night.
29. Powerful rain. mercury at 42. Snow all gone. A robin and song sparrow yesterday. Go to N.Y. again to-day. Met at a lunch given by Dr Eggleston to Dr Billings at the Century Club Mr Stedman, Howells, Warner, Van Dyke, Matthews, Morse -- ten of us. Stedman is a lovable man not a great personality, he is like a good, frank, brave, bright boy. A fine talker who tells you you are a fool in a way that does not hurt. Something of a bantam about him, but a very charming one. Eggleston with his iron gray mane makes a fine figure, a wonderful talker too. I am not quite at home with these men -- have no wit or repartee, or anecdotes. My mind is too serious and my life has been too secluded. I can not talk out of the air and make the sparks fly, as they can.
Rains heavy all day and at night. The second great rain of the year -- everything flooded.
Mch 1st Warm, thickly overcast with a little fine rain. Snow all gone; turbulent creeks and rivulets everywhere.
2. Colder with snow last night and this morning. Ice moving down this P.M. not much broke up yet.
3 River all clear from island south. No ice has come back; the north wind seems to have swept it all south, or piled it up along the east shore.
5. Cold hard, brilliant, windy March days, flooded with the white strong light of early spring. How good it looks -- the naked earth, the strong new light! Mercury 18 this morning.
7. Warmer, with rain. It is now 9 A.M. so dark in my study I can hardly see to write. -- Does not the quality of a mans mind, his soul, run through his body also? Will a kind, gentle, loving person ever have any malignant growths, or will any disease take a malignant form with him? Do not fevers etc. take a different course in headlong, obstinate, vindictive [crossed out: people] persons, from what they take in the opposite type? Some [crossed out: persons] people are like a clinched wrought iron nail, how they hold! Such men I fancy die hard, or with great suffering.
In persons of my type or temper-ment, something breaks, and life ends quickly and easily, I do not expect to die of any long, baffling disease, but either quickly, or of some obscure, insidious disease. -- A boy 16 years old writing to me from Pa. praises my "free open style" -- well said I think. I can not stand anything cramped, intricate, blind in my own writings. I want my page to be like a room full of windows -- no uncertainty no looking twice to see what I mean.
-- 10 March keeps pretty cold, ground bare, but snow threatened to-day.
Heard the first blue bird this morning on my way to P.O. He was flying north high overhead. Sparrow and robin in song.
11 Big snow storm; set in about noon and waxed as the day waned. One of those storms that travels along in impulses, like the shaking of a great white curtain -- ribbed or fluted or folded. How the borean spectres stalked by me from
the north. Storm centre came up the cost and drew recruits from the frozen north.
12. Good sleighing this morning 8 or 9 inches, mercury 20, river full of floating ice again. Squalls of light snow. 14 Cold, cold, and clear. Mercury 4 above, yesterday morning.
15.
Snow set in at noon.

16.
Still snowing, 5 or 6 inches -- nearly a foot on the ground. Rugged winter weather. Five blue birds on the 13th.


A large flock of snow buntings in the vineyard below the study feeding on the seeds of the weeds that stand above the snow. How cheery they act, how plump and well fed they look; the snow and the cold seem congenial to them. I hear their soft, twittering notes and calls. I see the gleam of white feathers amid the brown. Occasionally one alights on a stretched wire. Presently [crossed out: ???] a larger and darker bird comes swiftly by the study flying low under the wires in the vineyard toward the buntings. It is a shrike and he thirsts for blood or brains. But the buntings are on the alert and are up in the air as one bird before he reaches them. He joins the flock and goes along with them for some distance, but makes no attempt to strike one as I can see, and presently leaves them and alights on the top of a maple tree. The birds do not seem to fear him and again sweep past the tree to where he sits, and then go their way.
17. Snowed all day yesterday. Deepest fall of the season -- to the top of my rubber boots this morning -- 15 inches. Bright and mild to-day. Ice fast again from H. P. to Elbow.
[crossed out: 21] 19. Powerful rain all day. The deep snow on the ground is like a saturated sponge Coming home from Slab-sides where I worked all day, I was nearly to my knees in slush.
21.
Bright and sharp; mercury down to 12 this morning. Prof Triggs and I go over to Slab-sides to stay till Monday.

22.
Warmer. A fine display of huge March snow flakes in the morning -- big as geese feathers. Clear and thawing in

afternoon. Triggs and I have a feast of Whitman and a flow of soul.

23.
Colder; leave Slab-sides in morning; very cold north wind. Begins snowing in afternoon from the north. March is turning out the worst month of the season.


24 Storm light, very cold this morning -- 4 above here; river full of stationary ice. A high hole this morning and robins
in song. The sun brings the birds, no matter what the cold. Pine grosbeaks here still. Clifton Johnson comes at night and we go over to Slab-sides and pass the night.
25 Bright and cold. J and I have a good time at S.S.; what
roaring fires; what heary meals, what free and copious talk. J takes some photos, and leaves at night.
26. Much warmer, 40 degrees, with light rain in P.M.
Phoebe-bird to-day and meadow lark. Blue-birds as plentiful as former springs; robins very abundant. Nuthatches calling, sparrows singing. Sap running. Julian kills a black duck on the river.
27 Bright, cold, windy -- the beginning again of another series of days, another rotation of weather crops. -- Those very witty people -- always on the stretch to say something bright or funny, how they finally tire one. Wit is not the bread of life, but only the salt, or less even than that.
30.
Typical march weather -- the sour and sulky side of spring, -- rain, fog, gloom, dripping trees, sposhy muddy roads, wet snow spotted fields, chill snow choked woods. Yet how the robins scream and call and laugh, how the sparrows sing. Glassy river with great languidly floating islands of water soaked ice, water-fowl working northward, beaded drops hanging on all the twigs and sprays; thin motionless fog everywhere, the world given up to dankness and chill and gloom.

Cleared off in P.M. very lovely

31.
Spring day at last; bright, still, brooding; a soft vapor fills the air, voices of the happy birds everywhere; froze but little


last night. The train over the river marked only by its great windrow of steam just visible through the shining vapor. Oh, how the sparrows and phoebe birds touch my heart! And to-morrow will be April! My April! Little boat goes by on her first trip about 11 o'clock.
April 1st Mild day. Julian goes on his first duck hunt. Kills 6. I start for home on the evening train.
2d Raining this morning; stayed with Abbey last night. Reach Roxbury at 11. Snowing. Boil sap with Ed in afternoon windy, chilly, snow squally.
3.
My 59th birth day. Cold blowy, snowy all day. At evening so go over to Edens.

Find them well, in the new house. Hiram there and looks well.

4.
All day sit with Hiram and Eden and talk; blows and snows a gale all day. Mercury 22 at 9 a.m. No let-up at all. The little sparrows ruffled and blow[crossed out: ed]n about scratch industriously for the grass seed, lately sown about the yard.

5.
Cold, but the storm has spent itself. H. and I walk over to Willies. Come back to Roxbury in P.M. warmer.

6.
Sap runs a little in P.M. Snows again at night.

7.
3 or 4 inches of snow fall last night, and still snowing. Return home [crossed out: at] on morning train. Snow here also.

8.
Bright to-day, but chilly. Snow all off in afternoon.


-- I know living writers to-day, men of true genius, whose gravest danger is I think, a kind of inter-marriage of thoughts -- an intellectual breeding in and in process, they do not go enough to real things; they feed entirely on books. They love literature more than they love real things. What makes a thrill in them is what they read, not what they see or hear or smell. Not Nature, but art. This is the literary disease, of which we all have a touch.
9 A great, bright, sharp, still day; go with J after ducks on the river. J. kills 5. I lie in bottom of boat while he paddles up on to them behind his canvas "battery". A novel
experience. The poor ducks mistake us for a mass of floating ice. J. makes some long admirable shots. I row back, reach home at 5. I sleep well that night.
11 A real April day at last, partly overcast; wind southerly, mercury near temperate. Go to P.
12 Still better; a soft, brooding April day, really warm, above 60. No frost for two nights, little frogs on the 8. Lots of sylvaticas in the pools on the 10th Water still partly covered with ice, a regular chorus of peepers this P.M. Blue-birds all disappeared again. Two threatening rain storms have flashed in the pan.
13. April still smiles. The air full of the sentiment of spring, the pathos of spring; gentle, soft, wind, whitish blue vapor in the air; the sunlight yellow; the river languidly sparkling; robins calling and screaming, phoebes calling, sparrows singing, bees humming, roads drying and the plow scents the furrow. Mercury 70.
14 How sweet the morning! The sky has melted and come down and lies over the fields an across the hills, a soft, blue-white veil. Air moist and fragrant. On my way to the P.O. I paused to hear the long drawn tr-r-r-r-r-r of the toad; the gurgle of the cow blackbird, the o-kas-lee of the starling, the whick, whick, whick of the high-hole, the note of the phoebe, etc. Roads dry, the grass just starting. "The farms all busy with labor". Is one sad or glad such mornings? Both.
A large troop of chippies too, let me not forget them, Flitting along from one point to another, each moving on his own hook, yet all in company like picnickers.
15 The days are sweeter and sweeter and warmer and warmer. What an appetite I have for them! I sit this morning with my door open and let the sounds and odors come it -- the drumming of the high-holes, the call of phoebe, the trill of the bush sparrows and song sparrows and all the other bird sounds. The river shimmers and glints through the haze. The morning is like a [???] nude woman veiled by her own hair. April is in heat; she is pairing with the sun; she [crossed out: is in] yields herself to is embraces all day. I can see the union taking place even in my
vineyard.
First warbler this morning -- yellow rump I think, A slight, shuffling song.
The plow lusts for the furrow such a day, and the furrow lusts for the seed.
17 The abnormal heat con-tinues, above 80 and reaching 90 in some places. 81 last night at 5 1/2 on the north end of my house. Arbutus in bloom and dicentra. Lilac and crab apples showing the leaf. A mist of green over the weeping willows. All vegetation is being wheeled into coming out, doubtless only to be frozen next week. A brief but heavy thunder shower with hail at 6 3/4.
18. Clear, hazy, hot as ever; the cold wave seems delayed. House wren here this morning, kinglet yesterday.
The last of my fathers old neighbors. 'Riah Bartram burried yesterday, age 88. In a moment of mental aberration took his own life on Wednesday. He was our nearest neighbor on the west for 50 years; always worked more or less for father, helping finish haying butchering etc. How many pigs I have seen him "stick"! and how strange that at the last he should stick himself with his pocket-knife; a worthy, able man, much above the average in many ways, accumulated a large property for a farmer Never saw him ma[crossed out: n]d, or even irritated in my life; head like that of Secretary Chase, whom as I saw him in W. 30 years ago always reminded me of him. His mother owned our old farm early in the century; his father died there when 'Riah was a small boy.
How pathetic to think of the old farmer going under the sod in the April days, [crossed out: when] the time when during his whole life he has been the most eager and busy with his work. Farewell, friend of my father and of my youth, and father of my old mates, Jim, and Eleanor, [crossed out: w] we may not meet again, but I shall never forget thee!
19 The abnormal heat continues. I have never before seen 7 continuous day in April so hot as the week just closed, from 80 to 90 Each day
Heat abnormal all over the country. Vegetation coming out on a jump. Shad trees in blow several days ago, arbutus out since middle of week.
20. A slight change to cooler last night; passed the night at "Slab-sides".
21 Start for Binghampton to lecture. The country green and brimming with the feeling of April. Reach B. at 3. P.M. The Knapps drive me about the beautiful city Lecture at 8 to a full hall of nice people. They seem delighted and I am told are sorry when I stop at 9.15.
22 Return via Albany; much enjoy the ride up the Susquhanna; pass through towns the names of which were famil[crossed out: l]iar to me in Boyhood -- Afton, Bainbridge, Unadillia, Oneonta -.The thought offFather and mother constantly with me. This was their route to Pa. long ago, when they drove there to visit their friends. I remember their going when I was 3 or 4 years old, and twice later on in the fifties. They passed through the towns above named and down to Binghamton. I strained my eyes to see the road they must have come along here then they passed, I said to myself. I see their dusty but well fed team, their plain "pleasure" waggon; their plainly clad and dusty figures, the farmer country look of it all -- father with his red hair and freckled hands Mother with her brown hair and toil worn hands, silent save now and then some remark about the farms or teams they pass. They usually took 3 days to drive to Bradford Co. Pa. Once, in September 1854, Olly Ann and Walker went with them. On that trip mother saw the cars for the first time on the Erie road I suppose. Once they ran a great risk of being drowned in fording the Wyalusing Creek. A traveler happened along on horseback just in the nick of time and he told them to follow him, else father said, they would surely have got into deep water. The next night they came at dusk to a bridgeless creek, and concluded not to risk it, so turned back to the tavern where they were charged one shilling each for supper and lodging! How all [crossed out: ???] these things and more came back to me as I sped along this lovely [crossed out: ???]valley. at Oneonta I had been just 40 years before about april 11 or 12, on my way to Cooperstown to school. I saw no feature I knew.
At Unadilla lived a girl I corresponded with after I left school. Her name I have forgotten, but remember her dark hair and eyes. May be the conductor of the train was her son.
Cherry trees in bloom in Albany; willows green; looks like first week of an early May.
23 Frost last night, but not severe. Woods full
of young leaves.
25. Cool, the trees in Langdons woods again outlined or sketched with tender green-yellow foliage. Apple trees showing the pink. Season very early. Many hermit thrushes in the woods, silent. Vineyards all plowed. -- I do not suppose it is the music of the bird songs that so delights us. Many [crossed out: people] persons do not hear them at all, who would certainly hear pure musical sounds. Unless one is more or less a lover of nature, the bird songs do not give him much pleasure. Of themselves they are not much as music, but from association, and as the voice of nature they come to mean very much. Repro-duce any of them by artificial means and apart from their association, they are tame and crude, as signs of joy and love in nature, as a voice of the fields and woods they come home to us. The drumming of the wood pecker, or of the ruffed grouse, is very pleasing to me tho', it have not the quality of music. So the call of wild geese, or the voice of any wild thing. Why is a wild flower as we meet it in the woods, more pleasing than a cultivated one? Because, first of the contrast with its surroundings and because it is spontaneous, and suggests a spirit in nature that is friendly and seems to take thought of itself. It suggests soul, delicacy, refinement, and quite apart from ourselves.
April 30. April finishes in a most amiable mood -- a bright warm tranquil day. I spend it at Slab sides
Ingersoll comes at 5 P.M.
Wood thrush and king-bird and oriole and warbling vireo to-day. Foliage coming out rapidly. Warbler time at hand.
May 1st Bright warm day. We spend it at S.S. Vaningen and daughter and Lown come up. A pleasant time. Oh, the charm the pathos of the days!
Apple trees just blooming.
2d Overcast, cool. Spend it at S.S. Ingersoll leaves to-day.
3 Still overcast, threatening rain, which is needed. No rain this month to speak of. About 15000 celery plants put out last week.
7. Weather keeps cool and bright and dry. Rain much needed. Entrancing day this, so brilliant, so fragrant. Orchards all in bloom, birds nearly all here. So fresh, green and tender looks the world. -- Am reading the life and letters of Holmes; not deeply absorbed. H. was brilliant discursive writer -- did not do well at a set theme -- must have room to kick up his heels, was not much if not kicking up his heels. Nothing profound or suggestive, or illuminative in him to me. His light is a flash light; very pleasing, entertaining but it really dispels no dark-ness. He seems always to write with his eye upon his reader and not upon the truth. A mild literary sensationalism was his bane. Think what the verdict of H must be [???] such a man as Whitman.
15. Hiram came with his bees and bee traps yesterday and a new chapter in my life begins.
Van and Charley were all day moving his things from the car. He sleeps in my study and eats in the new shop. I prepare his food and wash his dishes. It is a great comfort to see him around; he is a bit of the old home and of father and mother and it does me good every hour to have him here
Tried hard to rain to-day, but only lays the dust. Very dry. No rain since April 21, and not much then. All things suffering badly. Grape arms from 15 to 20 inches long.
16. Very bright and lovely, [crossed out: but] and cooler. The drought takes another hitch. 18 Hiram and I move over to "Slabvsides" to be out of the reach of the domestic furies.
26. Our life at S.S. very enjoyable I feel like the toad when he escapes from under the harrow. I look about me and find life worth living after all. Hiram is great help just by his presence -- alleviates my chronic homesickness amazingly. Very dry till this morning Began raining in the night and continued till 7 a.m, -- at times heavy with vague distant thunder from S.W. About an inch of water. The first rain since March. The dryest May I ever saw. Too late to save the hay crop, tho' it will greatly improve it. Celery begins to grow rapidly.
27 Clear, warm, and lovely; the perfection of a May day. Hiram goes over to fuss with his bees nearly every day. I [crossed out: write] work in the morning hours on my Whitman MS. I have taken but one meal at home since we came here. A song sparrow just sang in front of my door.