Oct 1st The month comes in bright and hot, 88 degrees. 4 Bright lovely days, and cooler. 5 We start for Boston to day at 10. I go by way of St Albans and wife to B. I reach St. A. at 8 P.M. Spend [crossed out:
3] 2 days there pleasantly; weather cloudy and chilly. 8 Reach Boston to-night and Julians room at 8. Very happy to see the dear boy again.
9. Go with J. to hear two lectures and in P.M. to see football bet. Harvard and Dartmouth. Bright lovely days. 10 To church -- use three -- a flat, insipid sermon 12 Warm to day with showers in P.M. 14 Bright lovely days; we start for home at 8,30. Julian goes
with us to the street car on Harvard Square, in the clear crisp morning light. He stands there in the pave-ment as we move off and waves his hand. I look back and see him run quickly across the street toward his hall. I dare say my heart is much the heaviest. It is the October of my life, the May of his. We ride all day through the sunlit golden land; reach home at 7 P.M.
15 Still bright and cloudy; foliage all crimson and gold. But oh, how sad it all is to me; the thought of Julian constantly in my mind. Distance does contain a little bitterness of death.
16 Very warm. 90 degrees on my porch a brisk S.W. breeze; dry
17 A change in the night with brisk wind from NW. No rain. Much cooler, and clear.
-- As a rule I think the men who deny Christ now are the men who would have accepted him in his own day. They are men who believe in the present hour and man. They live in to-day and not in yesterday. Is the converse of this true also? namely that those who accept Christ to-day, are the ones who would have denied him had they seen and heard him? I believe it is mainly true. To accept the new man, the Christ of to-day, requires different endowment from that which accepts the theological Christ, or the theoretical Christ of the past ages. The Christ is always unpopular or denied by the mass of his contemporaries.
18 Bright and sharp. A severe frost last night.
"The fact revealed by the spectro-scope, that the physical elements of the earth exist also in the stars, supports the faith that a moral nature like our own inhabits the universe" An example of false reasoning by analogy. We know the stars exist; we see them, and the spectroscope reveals to us that the elements we know here on earth are found there. But this moral nature like our own -- this is assumed and is not supported at all by the analogy. The only legitimate inference from the analogy is that beings like ourselves inhabit the stars or their planets. As our sun has planets it is legitimate to infer that the other suns have planets. As our sun has planets, it is legitimate to infer that the other suns have planets, and that they have or have had, or may yet have beings like ourselves upon them.
The above quotation is the opening sentences of an article in The Forum of last May, on "Fallacies Concerning Prayer." The conclusion of the writer is that prayer is answered by or through its reflex action upon the petitioner; he rises to the height of his prayer. If he prays earnestly for health the [crossed out: mind] psychic effect may help cure the disease; if he prays for more faith, he already by that act of will has it. This is the new conception of prayer that science has brought about. Yet this writer a Reverend, has his little fling at science. But it is doubtful if mankind will continue to pray if they once come to take this viw of answer to prayer.
23. Still bright and mild and dry Go down to Summit to-day to visit Mabie 24 Cloudy and chilly, light rain. Mabie and I walk in the morning. A pleasant family -- new house excellent taste -.books by the thousand. In P.M. Whittridge the artist comes in; like him much; the plainness and simplicity of a country farmer. We take to each other.
25 Rain and wind to-day -- storm coming up the Coast. Start for home.
26. Home this morning; no rain here; clear and dry. 27 Still clear and dry. Katy-did last night. 28 Hiram goes back to Hobart to-day. 30 Colder, go down to West Point. Meet Alden of Harpers. Something very good and sweet about Alden. See the West
Point team tie Yale at football.
Nov 1st Warmer. Slow rain this morning from S.W. No rain to speak of for six weeks. -- How high the clouds sail above the mountains; their long uplifted ridges seem no barrier to them. Yet the mountains, so fixed and inert, surely cast a spell upon the clouds. They rob them of their rain; they hold the summer shower as with a tether, or they fix the boundaries of the storm.
2. Rain all night pretty heavy and now at 9 A.M. still at it; over one inch of water. -- Shall we say then that literature is not matter or substance, but a quality of substance? A true literary genius shall make literature out of the most [crossed out: normal] ordinary or commonplace subject by passing it through his heart or emotions. He imparts to it some quality from his own genius [crossed out: as the] An image or analogy that perpetually recurs to me is that of the bee and her honey. What the bee gets from the flower is sweet water to this she imparts a drop of formic acid, secreted by her own body. In like manner the literary artist imparts to his matter some quality or effluence of himself.
-- I think it is a very just remark [crossed out: which] or Criticism which Arnold makes in a letter to Norton of Lowells essay on Democracy -- namely that it lacks body and current, and that its bright sayings and points cannot make up for the want [crossed out: lack] of these. It is more or less true of all Lowells prose, it seems to me; his essays have not body and direction; too much force is spent upon wit and verbal detail.
They lack simplicity and rapidity of movement. There are no leading ideas that shed a light over the whole. Arnold himself had this virtue in a pre-eminent degree; there are in his writings no verbal fire-works to distract the attention; he moves right along; we follow him easily; he is as lucid as the day. It seems to me this is the highest merit; motion, motion, simplicity, and the clearness that comes out of them.
-- As soon as a work is conscious-ly literary, its value is gone. This is the fault I find with much of Walter Paters work; the effort is too obviously a literary one; the style takes note of itself. When a man is consciously religious do we not question his sincerity? The style that stands before the glass has fallen from grace. "Behold the lilies of the field" etc. Let your style be a real blossoming like theirs, a grace from within and not an adornment from without. Indeed, there is hardly a maxim true in morals or religion that is not equally true in art. Literature is a much broader term than science; it is not the thing itself but that which embalms and preserves the thing; it is an atmosphere, an effluence. A work may have a high literary value that has not a rag of literary adornment, and that never thinks of itself as literature at all, as the Bible. The utterencs of illiterte men under certain pressure, may have a hight literary value. Literature is not this or that, but it is the flavor, the quality of this, or that. We are apt to think that the moral, or religious, or philo-sophical value of a work is quite independent of its [crossed out: relig]literary value. But it is not. Its literary value rises out of tis moral or other value and is great or little as it is great or little. The most moving passage in the sermon is for that very reason the best literary passage. The most effective political tract is good literature just in pro-portion to its effectiveness. To say a thing so that it goes to the quick -- that is the demand of [crossed out: good] literature. Grants Memoirs and many of his despatches from the field of battle have literary value. Lincolns Gettysburg speech has high literary value, tho it never for a moment takes thought of itself. Everetts speech on the same occasion was a literary effort, but poor literature for all that. Literary efforts -- who does not want to steer clear of them in his reading. Give us an effort to speak a sane and truthful and sincere word. Huxleys writings have a great literary value because the effort is never a literary one, but a real one. When the preacher forgets that he is a preacher and is intent only to speak some real word but of his life and or experience as one soul to another soul, we listen to him gladly. When the editorial writer in the daily paper has some real conviction burning within him, and not merely a column to fill up, we warm up as we follow him; he is making literature. Real indignation, real anger, real love, real sym-pathy, real insight, real convic-tion -- out of these things comes literature.
4 Day of great beauty -- all gold, mild as early Oct, no wind, the river a great mirror. Some Poughkeepsie people on their wheels in the P.M. Night all silver. Suffering from my first cold for 3 or 4 years, -- I have often tried to define to myself what it is that makes good prose. I suppose one might as well try to define what it is that makes a good apple or a good melon. It is a complex result, or the result of complex causes. One mans prose may differ vastly from that of another, and yet be equally good. There must of course be a sense of maturity of ripeness, as in the case of the apple; and there must be savor, quality, the thing must be real and vital.
[crossed out: 9] 7. Fine day, cool and bracing; drive over to Sherwoods with young Arthur.
9th Cloudy, foggy, slow rain all night and part of yesterday after noon; chilly, a typical Nov. day of the negative sort, clears in P.M. Colder and windy. -- How much more valuable to a man is an instinct for the truth than any special gift or accomplishment. If he craves the truth alone, he will not be disturbed if his theories and systems fall in ruins about his head. Then I must find a larger and deeper truth, he says. What an instinct for the truth had Darwin. When facts appeared to be against him, how he wel.comed them, when they became his friends. How often we see men of brilliant part who achieve nothing of permanent worth because they have not this instinct for truth. A man with a system or theory to uphold is handicapped, unless he has an instinct for the truth like Darwin. Taine's criticism is less valuable than it would be had he no system to uphold. They are free indeed whom the truth makes free, because the truth finds them free.
15 Nov. still rather mild. No snow yet and not much frost. Nearly three inches of rain this month
Discouraging news from Julian, low marks in his studies. He has no talent for languages; in consequence he may have to give up College.
Overcast, threatening rain
16. Storm over; clear and warm like early October; air hazy. -- The day inevitably comes to every author when he must take his place amid the silent throngs of the past, when no new work can call atention to him afresh, when the partiality of friends no longer counts; when his freinds and admirers are [???] when gathered to their fathers the spirit of the day in which he writes has given place to [crossed out: another ???] the spirit of another and different day how, oh how will it fare with him then? How is it going to fare with Lowell, with Longfellow, with Emerson, with Whitman? How will it fare with poor me?
19.
First snow to-day, all the forenoon a quiet fall of large light flakes; they lie on the grass and weeds and trees like tufts of cotton or wool, an inch or more.

20.
A white wash of snow over all; still a seamless cloud. No wind, no sun, chilly.


23 Our second snow last night, nearly 3 inches. Bright and still this morning. -- What is only a bud in the father often becomes a branch in the son. -- When I write upon any literary theme I have to write and write till I get a sort of fund or capital to do business on.
25. Thanksgiving day. Mercury has been down to 10. Chilly to-day, ground white.
26 Rain and warmer. Snow all off. Go to P.
27. Rained nearly all night, clearing and colder this morning.
28 Clear and bright with sharp biting air. -- Emerson is a poor singer [crossed out: but] with wonderfully penetrating tones; it seems to me ha has no equal in this respect. And it was these tones that he valued most in others, any aeolian strain caught his ear at once. -- I see that the success of my little poem "Waiting" is not on account of its poetic merit, but for some other merit or quality. It puts in simple and happy form some common religious aspiration, without using at all the religious jargon. People write me from all parts of the country that they treasure it in their hearts, it is an anchor to windward. A celebrated N.Y. preacher writes me that it steadies his hand at the helm. A woman died the other day in P. with these verses, as it were, in her hand. They had been the consolation of her life. Pure poetry never affects people in this way, but poetry alloyed with religion does. Burns's best poem, "The Jolly Beggars" is not so popular as "The Cotters Saturday Night."
The old people had their favorite hymns in the hymn book -- some verse or verses that spoke to their particular case or experience, or aspiration. But the impartial disinterested reader would be compelled to judge the hymns by their poetic quality alone. Because this alone is permanent and universal. This we never out grow as we do the religious views and feelings of the past. The religious thrill, the sense of the infinite, the awe and mys-tery of the universe, is no doubt permanent in the race, but all [crossed out: cr]expression of it in creeds and forms addressed to the understanding, or exposed to the analysis of the understanding, are transient and flitting like the leaves of the trees. My little poem is vague enough to escape the reason, sincere enough to go to the heart, and poetic enough to stir the imagination.
Dec 1. The month comes in cloudy and cold. Am writing on criticism, etc. I must write and write and decant my thoughts till it is clear and satisfactory
5 Sunday. Clears off mild after an all nights rain and two cold cloudy days. Mild as Nov. Walk to S.S. in afternoon.
Finished Macaulays life and letters to-day. A great omnivorous partisan mind -- not fine but solid and strong -.oratorical, always pleading or arraigning, or eulogizing, alternating from invective to panagyric. Coarse like British oak and loyal and strong. His style antithetic, lucid, sweeping. Indeed he is always the orator, never the poet or the true critic. One of the strangest things in contemporary literary history is that he and Carlyle should not have seen and known each other.
6 Clear and mild, only two or three degrees of frost last night.
8 Overcast, still, hazy, mild. Spend the day at Slabsides with Booth and Lowne.
9 Air loaded with smoke and vapor. Still, partly overcast, mild, mercury 35. Insects in the air. No ice, no snow. I predict a mild winter. -- Soft moonlight night [crossed out: with] veiled with Indian summer vapor. No frost to-night.
10 The river hidden by haze and vapor; the call of wild ducks come up out of it; the belated Troy and Albany boats go by. Crows fly high [crossed out: in] where the air is clearer. Clouds high and slow moving. A mild Nov. day. Sore Soar throat and slight indisposition to-day.
Day gets warmer -- 62 at Slab-sides; warm all through the West. The bee is out the hive to-day and that is fatal to the winter.
11 Still warmer and April like, wind S.W. mercury up to 60 -- The Causes of poverty in modern democratic communities? Why, it is simple enough. It is because society is organized on a selfish basis, allowing each man to have all he can get, and some are able to get more than others. It is a scramble in which the quick, the strong, the bold, the unscru-pulous, get the most. Life is a struggle, business is a struggle, and every thing that tells in a struggle tells here. There are only two ways to abolish poverty -- abolish inequality in men in
their endowments and opportunities, or else regulate society as you would a hospital, or your stock yard, or anything else where each individual is allowed only one share.
12 April weather continues. Soft clear moonlight when I went to bed; rain in the morning with a cooler breath from the North.
13 Still April like -- nearly clear; only a light frost last night.
14 Raining this morning from NE. -- J. as he comes up the hill of life on one side, I go down on the other. I suspect I am as near the botton as he is the top. Oh. if we two could have climbed and descended nearer together!
-- Is no criticism as much self-expression as poetry? and in the same way. The poet is prohibited from expressing his private personal griefs and joys unless he can easily relate them to the griefs and joys of all men. He must make his experience my experience. His passion must be intense enough and famil-iar enough to kindle the same passion in me. The personal note is sounded in every good lyric, a cry of joy or pain, or aspiration, which comes out of a private heart and goes to the private heart of each of us. The personal estimate in criticism is the real estimate when the personal element is overarched by the impersonal. We prize the flavor of individuality is criticism as much as in anything else, but this flavor of individuality is like the flavor in fruits, it is a subtle quality that escapes our analysis. The universal intelligence taking form in a particular and definite type of mind, [crossed out: that is what we want], and surveying life and letters from a definite stand point; that is what we want. Not Smith or Jones served up raw, but S. or J. clarified, sublimated. The verdict of the disinterested critic differs from that of prejudice and half culture as refined petroleum differs from the crude -- the more personal, accidental elements have been taken out of it (We do not want the crude petroleum to burn in our lamps nor [crossed out: personal prejudice] the heat and fumes of eulogy or invective to read our books by. Criticism must shed a pure dispassionate light. Such it does not shed in the mass of British critics. The light is purer in Arnold than in any man before him Arnold was perhaps the most completely emancipated from cliques and parties and John Bullism of any British critic of his time, much more so than Macaulay or Carlyle in both of whom we get fumes or highly colored lights; highly colored in Macauley, intense and bewildering in Carlyle. We must purge ourselves if we would give a clear steady light.
Self-expession, yes, but it must be your better self -- the self that relates you to the best in me and in all other men.
15. Rain turned out very heavy, 3 or 4 inches of water; ground overflowing same as last July and August. Foggy, still, warm this morning, like April. -- Just read Prof Raleighs essay on Style, a kind of invertebrate book, no back bone -- no central idea or ideas from which it radiates. Choice diction, a connoisseur of words, but his ideas are thin, elusive. His flour is too finely bolted -.his matter too sublimated. Or we may say the rays he gives out are too near the violet end of the spectrum; We [crossed out: want] rarely get strong white light.
17. April weather contintues. Cloud and rain sprinkles.
18 Clear, colder; down to freezing this morning. Killed 11 rats in horse stable.
19. Clear and sharp; down to 20 this morning.
To a Young Writer -- always attack your subject from the rear if you can; that is, approach it from some deeper question, some broader gen-eralization. You shall then find that you overlook it and command all its aspects. If you attack it from the front, or from its own level, you shall find that it will yield to you only the fragments, a piece now and then, but get under it, or back of it, and see how it gives way. You have just read say, the life of Macaulay and want to write about him; so you draw up in front of him as it were and fix your attention upon Macaulay. No, go behind him, fix your attention upon upon some type or principle of which M. is an illustration, and the oratorical type, the great middle class mind etc. and thus get a vantage ground from which to survey him.
20. Cold this morning and [crossed out: read] red in the East. Mercury down to 10. Long, long thoughts of father and
mother this day. Fathers birth day and mothers death day. Light snow in afternoon, and warmer.
[crossed out: 2] It is curious that Wordsworth should have liked only Burns'es serious poetry -- like "The Cotters Saty Night," his little amatory songs he said we must forget. Tennyson, on the other hand could not tolerate the serous poetry, but liked immensely the little "amatory songs" The moralist chose in W. the artist and true critic in T.
24. Cold, clear, windy; down to 9 this morning
Julian home yesterday from Harvard. I meet him at Esopus and we walk down the track. How delighted we are to see him. He looks well and a little more manly than 3 months ago. How he blots out everything else for the time being. How I pity those who have no boy to come home from College at the holidays. He is full of the life there. How poetic and romantic it all seems to me. To day he is off a hunding with Jimmy Acker. -- To be roiled up is an expressive phrase. If the river is muddy I observe that it shows the most plainly when it is angry. In a calm you hardly notice it.
25 Xmas; bright, sharp day; a light skim of snow -- mercury down to 5 in the morning; thin floating ice on river. We have our Xmas turkey at 2 P.M. Mrs. Binder comes in the evening.
26 Milder. Light snow nearly all day -- about an inch. No wind. Julian takes a row up the river in PM.
28. Clear sharp day, down to 10 this morning. Julian goes up the river in his boat after ducks. At 3 P.M. I go down to the river and am alarmed at the condition of the ice; vast masses of it grinding on the shore; seems impossible for a boat to live in it. So I start up the river bank hoping to see him coming back. The ice roars louder and louder and jams and grinds harder and harder, and I become more and more alarmed. The farther I go the more anxious about the boy I become. My imagination begins to work and I am soon wrethed indeed. At last I reach Esopus dock, but no Julian in sight. But a man tells me he saw him go up about 2 P.M. It is now 4. The man, who is an older river man and duck hunter says the ice makes it dangerous, he was himself afraid to go out on such a day. I worry more and more Darkness will surely come on, and the boy with his canvas boat will be ground to pieces and frozen fast in the ice. I tear on up the river and reach Pells Dock a mile farther up. The I fancy I see him in an open canal of water near the [crossed out: ???] "quarry dock". He does not seem to be rowing, and the ice is shutting up the open south of us faster and faster. Bill Obrien joins me and we look and speculate, and try to put in his boat and go to the rescue, but it is too heavy. Then I tear along the shore again and when within a quarter of a mile of what seems to be his boat I shout to him. Just then his gun goes off, and I see he has been stalking a duck, and is not alarmed and in no hurry. I shout to him and he rows along much amazed to see me. No danger he says and laughs at my anxiety. The sun is down and the tide nearly slack. I try to persuade him to put the boat ashore at Pells and come home with me on foot, but he refuses and says he can beat me home. Says there is open water all along shore, as indeed does seem now to be the case, and as indeed all he found. Nip and I take the road for home; the good level walking is much a change from our scramble along the river bank, that I am less tired than I thought and make good time. At ten minutes to 6 we are home, and a few minutes later
J. reaches the dock. I go down and am greatly relieved to see him safe back again. All my worry was vain but I got a big walk and ought to be better for it for days.
29. Down to 4 this morning; trees all feathered out with frost feathers, ice fast.
Now at 9 A.M. ice is moving down, leaving a clean open space in front. -- Spencer's rely to Huxley is very pertinent. "If ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, of what is he a product?"
-- Extract from a letter from Mrs Woodworth of St Albans Vt,
"I met Miss -- from Boston the President of the W.C.T.U. for the U.S. etc. She asked me if I had seen your paper on the Re-reading of Books in Nov. Century. She told me how she had enjoyed it. She had noticed too what impressed me, the sad note through it all. Why, my dear friend, the pathos of that paper is enough to break ones heart. Did you realize yourself how pathetic it was? As if you had tried everything in life and found it all only dust and ashes at last. I find that note in most of your work now, so sad, oh, so sad."
I knew there was a plaintive tinge to the essay, but did not dream it was really sad. It came of the retrospection I suppose; the past is so full of pathos to me.
31. Heavy snow storm, about one foot of damp heavy snow from N.E.
1898 Jany 1. Real winter at last -- deep snow and colder; bright day. Julian clears the walks of snow etc.
2d Sunday; down to 6 below this morning, 10 and 12 below back from river. River all closed in front. Julian returns to Harvard on morning train. Expect now two or three days of moping sadness His 10 days at home have been bright ones. He hunted 3 or 4 days, 4 quail, one partridge, 2 ducks.
3 Bright clear day.
4 Colder again, zero this morning. -- In ones thinking how much difference it makes whether he has a thesis to maintain, or is simply hunting for the truth. Only he who is pledged to the truth alone
is a free man. He is disinterested The most eminent example I know of an honest truth-seeker, who yet had a system to uphold, was Darwin. His first service was to truth and not to theory. -- Oh, the mystery of the universe, how it presses upon one at times. It pressed upon me to-night as I walked to the P. O. through the darkness. The stars up there, I here, what is back of it all. My father solved the mystery by accepting the old faith -- this made it all clear to him. But to me, born in a later time, this is no solution; it is a child's dream
5. Fine even winter weather down to 16 degrees this morning.
7. Light rain last night; water on the ice this morning. Prospects of cooler 9. Sunday; bright mild days lately, snow melting, ice wasting, only two or three degrees of frost at night. I keep well and work away at my essays on Style, Criticism etc. "Absurd" I say for me to waste my time on such barren themes, but they haunt me. I can not drop them, and so I keep on. Well, some things are made clearer to me than when I began to write. I have to serve a long apprentice-ship to every subject before I master it. I have to begin at the stump and work up, and the process is a slow one.
Dreamed of father and mother last night. This is the 14th anniversary of father's death.
12.
Still mild spring like weather, only a few degrees of frost at night. Ice still hard and smooth on the river; not much power in the sun yet; two months later at the same temperature how his rays will rot and disintegrate the ice. Madam is passing through the winter solstice of her temper. Nip and I may soon have to take to the woods.

Fog and light rain in P.M. and at night.

13.
Bright and spring like this morning, mercury 40; a thin sheet of water over the ice which puts a smooth familiar face upon the river. It reflects the shores as in summer.


14 As I started out for the P.O. this morning I heard the nuthatch calling in the trees near the school house. When I returned he was still calling, calling. It was only the middle of January, but the ground [crossed out: snow] was getting bare in places, the air was mild and there was the look if not the feeling of spring. I heard the nuthatch with the ears of youth. To have heard him with the ears of to-day, or as if for the first time, would not have been much. But I was a boy again in the old sugar bush at home; the great kettles were boiling, the tin pans glistened at the feet of the big maples, the little new born rills went murmuring by, the air was soft and full of awakening sounds and not the least of them was this soft nasal call of the nuthatch, as it came from the near trees. Why do all such sounds refer to ones youth. It seems as if then only did things make a lasting impression upon us. The call of the bird as I heard it there in my boyhood was a part of the season and it carried that time and scene deep into my heart and became one with them.
15. Still mild, but snowing this morning.
19. Two or three cold mornings -- down to 12 and 14.
Much worried these days about Julian.
Hiram came back to-day.
Stormy weather in the kitchen The domestic furies have worried me the ast week almost beyond endurance. Sleep
poor.
20. Snow last night, turning to rain, becoming heavy this morning. heavy all day. -- The dog does not know enough to turn his back to the fire to warm and dry that side also. Yet when my dog tries to cross an enclosure which he has entered by a gate, and finds no egress on the other side, he runs swiftly back to the gate by which he entered. He works all around the fire but will not turn his face from it.
23.
Snow last night turning to rain, heavy all night; probably 2 or 3 inches of precipitation the last week. Warm to day, 40 degrees.

24.
Clear windy and getting cold -- probably a cold wave.


26 Snowed all ngiht; about 8 inches this morning and not yet finished.
29 Colder the past two days -- down to 4 above. Mrs B. leaves for Pouhgkeepsie to day. Hiram and I with the Ackers
30.
Bright and cold -- 6 below this morning -- the prospect of the ice harvest brightens. Still writing on Style, Criticism etc.

31.
Began snowing this morning, very fine, and below zero.


Feb 1st The biggest storm of the season; over one foot of snow. 21 inches now on the ground The country buried in snow, and all trains delayed, cold and windy. 2d Bright and cold -- 6 below zero. All roads cho[crossed out:a]ked up with snow. Rugged winter weather. 7 Fine winter weather the past few days, warmer yesterday and the day before, colder to day -- down to 6. Still and
clear, air full of frost mist. Ice men opening their canals to-day.
8. Start for Cambridge this morning at 6:20; reach Boston at 3,50 and Harvard Square at 4,30. Julian is on the spot to meet me, happy and well. We have ten days to-gether again. I occupy his chums room till Sunday, when I take a room with Rodman Gilder. [crossed out: We] I take my meals with him at the Fox Croft. I like being among the boys, and seem really to share their young eager life. I read in the library here, and many days go to Boston and read in the Athenaeum library. I am soon in excellent health and spirits We dine at the Suters and the Pages, and make several calls. One night we go to Boston to the theatre -- see "The Heart of Maryland" -- poor stuff.
19 Last night I said good bye to Julian and this morning at 7 am up and off to Boston; take train at 8,30 and reach Poughkeepsie at 4,50.
20 Heavy rain all night and nearly all day -- probably 2 inches of water. Came up home to-day.
21. Still raining by spurts and colder. Tom Riley died suddenly while at work on the ice the morning I left. I met him near the station as I was going for the train; he was on his way to his work. In two hours he was dead, from heart disease. Rest his soul! 21 Thunder to-day and sudden sharp shower A freshet in the streams
22 Still densely cloudy with spurts of snow and rain 23 No signs of clearing yet, snowing this morning and thawing.
27 Fair weather at last, clear sharp air from the north, freezing at night. Blue-birds to-day and yesterday.
28 Still clear and sharp. March 1st Clear and colder, ten degrees of frost -- wind north W.
Hiram and I walk up to Esopus to Town Meeting; road muddy, with here and there a dry streak or a streak of snow. 2d Still clear and sharp; clouding up in P.M. 3d Light snow last night, snowing a little yet this morning.
Ice on the river slowly moving up this morning. It lifted anchor without the usual warnings. 6 Weather continues fine. Clear bright days and moonlight nights. Ideal sap weather to-day, mercury 42. Sap runs very fast, mercury down to 24 in the morning. First birds slow in arriving.
7 Still clear and fine, perfect sugar weather. First sparrow song this morning. Mrs B returns to-day from P. gone since January 25.
8 Glorious spring morning, soft, hazy, more sparrows. The first robins, a band of 50 or more fly over my head, their faces set northward, as I go to the P.O. They shout out as if in greeting.
First meadow lark to-day, seems to say "Come to me, dear," the last word long and plaintive. Boiling sap on the old stove in the open air, and still working on my essays on Style, Criticism etc.
10 The April like days continue, mercury above 50. Sap-run about over; ice nearly disappeared from the river. I have boiled down 8 or 10
pails of sap in a wash boiler on an old stove set here in the wood pile near the Study. In the interval I read Sainte Beuve -- a spirit like these genial lucid March days. Not many birds yet.
A college President writes like this:
"Experiment and inference are the hook and line by which Science fishes the dry formulas out of the fluid fact.
Art, on the other hand undertakes to stock the stream with choice specimens of her own breeding and selection," Hyde.
The artis says La Farge, always gives to Nature the character of the lens[crossed out: e] through which [crossed out: you] he sees it. No absolute Nature, the man is always the main question.
11 The wonderful weather continues, mid-April days, milder and milder, no frost last night. Clear this morning. But few robins yet; one black-bird this morning. Sap all boiled in. [crossed out: Was]
La Farge says that ten men sketching the same view, and not seeking self expression, will make ten different pictures -.each will lay the emphasis on a different feature.
12 Cloudy, hazy, soft, rainy this morning. Warm as mid April, ice all gone from the river; snow all off the fields. Sparrows singing everywhere. -- What a thorn or sheaf of thorns Walt Whitmam is in the side of Edgar Fawcett. Poor Edgar. I hope W. does not keep him awake nights. I think I have seen at least half a dozen spiteful allusions to W. from his pen the past year, and now in the last Colliers Weekly, he has a long, carefully worded outburst. Think of it. This rude uncouth bard of democracy hailed in Europe as a great poet and prophet and poor Edgar, with his faultless verse not hailed at all! If faultless verse, Edgar, made poets
poets would be as plenty as black-berries. But it requires a man too, and in this respect, I suspect you are not much.
13. The third day born of the S.W. wind -- warm ([crossed out 54 or 5] 66 at Slabsides at 3 P.M.) hazy, cloudy, opaque, vague, dissolving, rain-spirnkles or on the point of dissolving, full of earth odors, full of sparrow notes and songs, (fox and song) melting the snow in the woods, the ice on the ponds, the frost in the ground, [crossed out: the] bringing out the angle worms, the caterpillars and the first butter-flies, stopping the flow of sap in the sugar maples; quickening the roots of grass under ground and causing them to push up the first [crossed out: folded] green leaf, bringing out the toads and frogs and hunting the joyous season of Spring. Phoebe, this morning. Toads and frogs last night.
14 Cooler, clear, breezy, lovely, wind from N.W. mercury down to 34 this morning. Men tieing grape vines to-day.
Health excellent all winter and spring so far, mind active and fruitful. -- my out-door and bird papers could only have been written by a country-man and a dweller in the country. But probably my literary critiism and essays suffer from this very cause. They should have been written by a dweller in cities, a mover and [crossed out: ???] among the throngs of books and men. This would have helped to give them snap, decision, brevity, point. The intellect, the judgement are sharpened in the city, the heart; the emotions, the intuitions, the religious sense are fostered in the country. (Is this true?)
18 The wonderfully fine March weather continues; nearly clear each day; only a light frost at night. Frogs in full chorus, birds ditto.
[crossed out: W] Hazel nut in bloom two days ago -- a great display of masculinity, and a feeble display of femininity. How modest and shy as it were are all female blossoms, the hazel, the hickory, the alder the oak, the butternut etc.
How I pity the dweller in town these days. The fox sparrow that I am now hearing, the musical clatter of the juncos, the trill of the song sparrow -- how sweet and inspiring, and the song of the toad at twilight -- that long drawn lulling tr-r-r-r-r-r and the chorus of the little frogs filling all the valley with a maze of musical sound -- what is there in town that can make up for that
Yesterday I heard the first high hole announce his arrival -- send out his challenge to the spring -- how it stirs my memory.
The fields and open spaces have a sudden new attraction. My thoughts go and scratch with the hens amid the dry leaves; I pick up as much as they do; they nip the short new spears of grass with the geese, they follow the migrating ducks northward; they hover about the farm and garden fires about me; they career away to the sugar maple woods where the sap is [crossed out: dripping] making music in the tin buckets. I have trouble to keep them here at my prosy tasks.
19 Dark and showery this morning with thunder, warm, air blurred with smoke and vapor.
22 Quite a heavy rain from S.W. with some snow in the air. More rain at night.
25 Wonderfully fine day. Clear and still all day
26 Some frost last night. Nearly clear to-day, wind shifting to southerly.
27 Overcast, chilly. Grass greening, arbutus just opening. Never knew arbutus to bloom before in March in this climate. In Nature it is the middle of April. -- Kipling [crossed out: is] has a fine talent but not a great nature [crossed out: or passion]. We admire his things more than we love them. He does not quite reach the soul. He has no atmosphere. He is not a great poet, but a wonderfully clever one.
April 1st Clear and sharp; froze last night. In afternoon Hiram and I move over to Slabsides and again begin our life there. Arbutus, blood root, and hepatica in bloom, at sunset a winter wren sings briefly in front of the door.
2d Cold, quite a freeze again last night. Cloudy, to-day with snow flakes in the air, and then a dash or two of rain. Clears off at sunset.
3d Colder last night, froze hard, fear for fruit, our delayed March weather at hand My 61st birt hday. Health good after a winter of good deal of mental activity. Grows colder all day with flurries of snow on the Catskills. A severe cold wave.
4th Hard, bright, cold, cold -- down to 20 this morning, colder than any time in March. No doubt peaches and cherries are all killed.