22 September 1851 – 28 September 1851

To the Three Friends’ Hill over Bear Hill. Yesterday and to-day the stronger winds of autumn have begun to blow, and the telegraph harp has sounded loudly. I heard it especially in the Deep Cut this after- noon, the tone varying with the tension of different parts of the wire. The sound proceeds from near the posts, where the vibration is apparently more rapid. I put my ear to one of the posts, and it seemed to me as if every pore of the wood was filled with music, labored with the strain, — as if every fibre was affected and | being seasoned or timed, rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law. Every swell and change or inflection of tone pervaded and seemed to proceed from the wood, the divine tree or wood, as if its very substance was transmuted. What a recipe for pre- serving wood, perchance, — to keep it from rotting, — to fill its pores with music! How this wild tree from the forest, stripped of its bark and set up here, rejoices to transmit this music! When no music proceeds from the wire, on applying my ear I hear the hum within the entrails of the wood, — the oracular tree acquiring, ac- cumulating, the prophetic fury. The resounding wood! how much the ancients would have made of it! To have a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude, and that harp were, as it were, the manifest blessing of heaven on a work of man’s! Shall we not add a tenth Muse to the immortal Nine? And that the invention thus divinely honored and distinguished — on which the Muse has conde- scended to smile — is this magic medium of commu- nication for mankind! To read that the ancients stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and news of peace, and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate so that it emitted a harp-like and zolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention. Yet this is fact, and we have yet attributed the invention to no god.* I am astonished to see how brown and sere the ground- sel or “fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood’s Meadow, which has been touched by frost, already is, — as if it had died long months ago, or a fire had run through it. It is a very tender plant. | Standing on Bear Hill in Lincoln. The black birches (I think they are), now yellow, on the south side of Flint’s Pond, on the hillside, look like flames. The chestnut trees are brownish-yellow as well as green. It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen and the fields look as smooth as velvet. The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze and the red drooping barberries sparkle amid the leaves. From the hill on the south side of the pond, the forests have a singularly rounded and bowery look, clothing the hills quite down to the water’s edge and leaving no shore; the ponds are like drops of dew amid and partly covering the leaves. So the great globe is luxuriously crowded without margin. The Utricularia cornuta, or horned utricularia, on the sandy pond-shore, not affected by the frost.

Notwithstanding the fog, the fences this morning are covered with so thick a frost that you can write your name anywhere with your nail. The partridge and the rabbit, — they still are sure to thrive like true natives of the soil, whatever revolu- tions occur. If the forest is cut off, many bushes spring up which afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever.

Returning over the causeway from Flint’s Pond the other evening (22d), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annurs- nack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich em- purpled look. It is rare that we perceive this purple tint in the air, telling of the juice of the wild grape and poke-berries. The empurpled hills! Methinks I have only noticed this in cooler weather. Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness, and then I would suddenly find myself abreast of them without having seen anything or heard their footsteps. It was cloudy and rainy weather combined with the ab- sence of the moon. So dark a night that, if a farmer who had come in a-shopping had spent but an hour after sunset in some shop, he might find himself a . prisoner in the village for the night. Thick darkness. 8 a. M.— To Lee’s Bridge via Conantum. It is a cool and windy morning, and I have donned a thick coat for a walk. The wind is from the north, so that the telegraph harp does not sound where I cross. This windy autumnal weather is very exciting and bracing, clear and cold, after the rain of yesterday, it having cleared off in the night. I see a small hawk, a pigeon (?) hawk, over the Depot Field, which can hardly fly against the wind. At Hubbard’s Grove the wind roars loudly in the woods. Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost; barberries also. It is cattle- show day at Lowell. Yesterday’s wind and rain has strewn the ground with leaves, especially under the apple trees. Rain coming after frost seems to loosen the hold of the leaves, making them rot off. Saw a woodchuck disappearing in his hole. ‘The river washes up-stream before the wind, with white streaks of foam on its dark surface, diago- nally to its course, showing the direction of the wind. Its surface, reflecting the sun, is dazzlingly bright. The outlines of the hills are remarkably distinct and firm, and their surfaces bare and hard, not clothed with a thick air. I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant’s meadow. It is a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer and more conspicuous. ‘The huckleberry bushes on Conantum are all turned red. What can be handsomer for a picture than our river scenery now? ‘Take this view from the first Conantum Cliff. First this smoothly shorn meadow on the west side of the stream, with all the swaths distinct, sprin- kled with apple trees casting heavy shadows black as ink, such as can be seen only in this clear air, this strong light, one cow wandering restlessly about in it and lowing; then the blue river, scarcely darker than and not to be distinguished from the sky, its waves driven southward, or up-stream, by the wind, making it appear to flow that way, bordered by willows and button-bushes; then the narrow meadow beyond, with varied lights and shades from its waving grass, which for some reason has not been cut this year, though so dry, now at length each grass-blade bending south be- fore the wintry blast, as if bending for aid in that direc- tion; then the hill rising sixty feet to a terrace-like plain covered with shrub oaks, maples, etc., now variously tinted, clad all in a livery of gay colors, every bush a feather in its cap; and further in the rear the wood- crowned Cliff some two hundred feet high, where gray rocks here and there project from amidst the bushes, with its orchard on the slope; and to the right of the Cliff the distant Lincoln hills in the horizon. The land- scape so handsomely colored, the air so clear and whole- some; and the surface of the earth is so pleasingly varied, that it seems rarely fitted for the abode of man. In Cohush Swamp the sumach leaves have turned a very deep red, but have not lost their fragrance. I notice wild apples growing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over the colored, painted leaves of the sumach, and reminding me that they were ripened and colored by the same influences, — some green, some yellow, some red, like the leaves. Fell in with a man whose breath smelled of spirit which he had drunk. How could I but feel that it was his own spirit that I smelt?! Behind Miles’s, Darius Miles’s, that was, I asked an Irishman how many po- wae re so om fe ae tatoes he could dig in a day, wishing to know how well they yielded. “Well, I don’t keep any account,” he an- swered; “I scratch away, and let the day’s work praise itself.” Aye, there’s the difference between the Irish- man and the Yankee; the Yankee keeps an account. The simple honesty of the Irish pleases me. A spar- row hawk, hardly so big as a nighthawk, flew over high above my head, — a pretty little graceful fellow, too small and delicate to be rapacious. Found a grove of young sugar maples (Acer saccha- rinum) behind what was Miles’s. How silently and yet startlingly the existence of these sugar maples was re- vealed to me, — which I had not thought grew in my immediate neighborhood, — when first I perceived the entire edges of its leaves and their obtuse sinuses. Such near hills as Nobscot and Nashoba have lost all their azure in this clear air and plainly belong to earth. Give me clearness nevertheless, though my heavens be moved further off to pay for it. I perceive from the hill behind Lee’s that much of the river meadows is not cut, though they have been very dry. The sun-sparkle on the river is dazzlingly bright in this atmosphere, as it has not been, perchance, for many a month. It is so cold I am glad to sit behind the wall. Still the great bidens blooms by the causeway- side beyond the bridge.’ At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or folli- cles of the Asclepias Syriaca now point upward. Did they before all point down? Have they turned up? , Lhey are already bursting. I release some seeds with the long, fine silk attached. The fine threads fly apart at once, open with a spring, and then ray themselves out into a hemispherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor and all reflecting prismatic or rainbow tints. The seeds, besides, are furnished with wings, which plainly keep them steady and prevent their whirling round. I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and I fear it will make shipwreck against the neighboring wood; but no, as it approaches it, it surely rises above it, and then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctu- ation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it. How many myriads go sailing away at this season, high over hill and meadow and river, on various tacks until the wind lulls, to plant their race in new localities, who can tell how many miles distant! And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, —a perfect adaptation to this end, a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs. Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds ? ! On Mt. Misery some very rich yellow leaves — clear yellow —of the Populus grandidentata, which still love to wag, and tremble in my hands. Also canoe birches there. The river and pond from the side of the sun look comparatively dark. As I look over the country west- ward and northwestward, the prospect looks already bleak and wintry. The surface of the earth between the forests is no longer green, but russet and hoary. You see distinctly eight or ten miles the russet earth and even houses, and then its outline is distinctly traced against the further blue mountains, thirty or thirty-five miles distant. You see distinctly perhaps to the height of land between the Nashua and Concord, and then the convexity of the earth conceals the further hills, though high, and your vision leaps a broad valley at once to the mountains. Get home ‘at noon. At sundown the wind has all gone down.

I was struck by the fitness of the expression chosen by the Irishman yesterday, — “I let the day’s work praise itself.” It was more pertinent than a scholar could have selected. But the Irishman does not trouble himself to inquire if the day’s work has not reason to blame itself. Some men are excited by the smell of burning powder, but I thought in my dream last night how much saner to be excited by the smell of new bread. I did not see but the seeds of the milkweed would be borne many hundred miles, and those which were ripened in New England might plant themselves in Pennsylvania. Densely packed in a little oblong chest armed with soft downy prickles and lined with a smooth silky lining, lie some one or two hundreds such pear- shaped seeds (or like a steelyards poise), which have derived their nutriment through a band of extremely fine silken threads attached by their extremities to the core. At length, when the seeds are matured and cease to require nourishment from the parent plant, being weaned, and the pod with dryness and frost bursts, the extremities of the silken threads detach themselves from the core, and from being the conduits of nutvi- ment to the seed become the buoyant balloon which, like some spiders’ webs, bear the seeds to new and dis- tant fields. They merely serve to buoy up the full-fed seed. Far finer than the finest thread. Think of the — great variety of balloons which at this season are buoyed up by similar means! I am interested in the fate or success of every such venture which the autumn sends forth.’ I am astonished to find how much travellers, both in the East and West, permit themselves to be imposed on by a name, — that the traveller in the East, for instance, presumes so great a difference between one Asiatic and another because one bears the title of a Christian and the other not. At length he comes to a sect of Christians, Armenians or Nestorians, —and predicates of them a far greater civilization, civility, and humanity than of their neighbors, I suspect not with much truth. At that distance and so impartially viewed, I see but little difference between a Christian and a Mahometan; and so I perceive that European and American Christians, so called, are precisely like these heathenish Armenian and Nestorian Christians, — not Christians, of course, in any true sense, but one other heathenish sect in the West, the difference be- tween whose religion and that of the Mahometans is very slight and unimportant. Just such, not Christians but, as it were, heathenish Nestorian Christians, are we Americans. As if a Christian’s dog were something better than a Mahometan’s! I perceive no triumphant superiority in the so-called Christian over the so-called Mahometan. That nation is not Christian where the principles of humanity do not prevail, but the preju- dices of race. I expect the Christian not to be super- stitious, but to be distinguished by the clearness of his knowledge, the strength of his faith, the breadth of his humanity. A man of another race, an African for in- stance, comes to America to travel through it, and he meets with treatment exactly similar to, or worse than, that which the American meets with among the Turks, and Arabs, and Tartars. He is kicked out of the cars and hotels, or only admitted to the poorest place in them. ‘The traveller, in both cases, finds the religion to be a mere superstition and frenzy, or rabidness. The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come. Fires have become comfort- able. ‘The evenings are pretty long. | 2 p. M.— To bathe in Hubbard’s meadow, thence to Cliffs. It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. The air is of crystal purity. Both air and water are so transparent that the fisherman tries in vain to deceive the fish with his baits. Even our commonly muddy river looks clear to-day. I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. Examined the hornets’ nest near Hubbard’s Grove, suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes. ‘The tops of the bushes appearing to grow out of it, little leafy sprigs, had a pleasing effect. An inverted cone eight or nine inches by seven or eight. I found no hornets now buzzing about it. Its entrance appeared to have been enlarged; so I concluded it had been deserted, but, looking nearer I discovered two or three dead hornets, men of war, in the entryway. Cut- ting off the bushes which sustained it, I proceeded to open it with my knife. First there were half a dozen layers of waved brownish paper resting loosely on one another, occupying nearly an inch in thickness, for a cov- ering. Within were the six-sided cells in three stories, suspended from the roof and from one another by one or two suspension rods only, the lower story much smaller than the rest. And in what may be called the attic garret of the structure were two live hornets apparently partially benumbed with cold, which in the sun seemed rapidly recovering themselves, — their faculties. Most of the cells were empty, but in some were young hornets still, their heads projecting, apparently still-born, per- haps overtaken unexpectedly by cold weather. These insects appear to be very sensible to cold. The inner circles of cells were made of whitish, the outer of gray- ish, paper. It was like a deserted castle of the Mohawks, a few dead ones at the entrance of their castle.' I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky, with as much interest as his friends did Mr. Lauriat.1 I brought home two of the pods which were already bursting open, and amused myself from day to day with releasing the seeds and watching [them] rise slowly into the heavens till they were lost to my eye. No doubt the greater or less ra- pidity with which they rose would serve as a natural barometer to test the condition of the air. The hornets’ nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance. In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions. Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milk- weed. There is almost always a pair of hawks. Their shrill scream, that of the owls, and wolves are all related.

Since I perambulated the bounds of the town, I find that I have in some degree confined myself, —my vision and my walks. On whatever side I look off I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men? No scenery will redeem it. What can be more beautiful than any scenery inhabited by heroes? Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero. Hornets, ‘hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a coun- try as men of a similar character. It is a charmed circle which I have drawn around my abode, having walked not with God but with the devil. I am too well aware when I have crossed this line. Most New England biographies and journals — John Adams’s not excepted — affect me like opening of the tombs. The prudent and seasonable farmers are already plowing against another year.

Here is a cloudy day, and now the fisher- man is out. Some tall, many-flowered, bluish-white asters are still abundant by the brook-sides. I never found a pitcher-plant without an insect in it. The bristles about the nose of the pitcher all point in- ward, and insects which enter or fall in appear for this reason unable to get out again. It is some obstacle - which our senses cannot appreciate. Pitcher-plants more obvious now. We of Massachusetts boast a good deal of what we do for the education of our people, of our district- school system; and yet our district schools are as it . were but infant-schools, and we have no system for the education of the great mass who are grown up. I have yet to learn that one cent is spent by this town, this political community called Concord, directly to edu- cate the great mass of its inhabitants who have long since left the district school; for the Lyceum, impor- tant as it is comparatively, though absolutely trifling, is supported by individuals. ‘There are certain re- fining and civilizing influences, as works of art, journals and books, and scientific instruments, which this com- munity is amply rich enough to purchase, which would educate this village, elevate its tone of thought, and, if ' it alone improved these opportunities, easily make it the centre of civilization in the known world, put us on a level as to opportunities at once with London and Arcadia, and secure us a culture at once superior to both. Yet we spend sixteen thousand dollars on a Town House, a hall for our political meetings mainly, and nothing to educate ourselves who are grown up. Pray is there nothing in the market, no advantages, no intellectual food worth buying? Have Paris and London and New York and Boston nothing to dispose of which this village might try and appropriate to its own use? Might not this great villager adorn his villa with a few pictures and statues, enrich himself with a choice library as available, without being cumbrous, as any in the world, with scientific instruments for such as have a taste to use them? Yet we are contented to be countrified, to be provincial. I am astonished to find that in this Nineteenth Century, in this land of free schools, we spend absolutely nothing as a town on our own education, cultivation, civilization. Each town, like each individual, has its own character, — some more, some less, cultivated. I know many towns so mean- spirited and benighted that it would be a disgrace to belong to them. I believe that some of our New Eng- land villages within thirty miles of Boston are as boor- ish and barbarous communities as there are on the face of the earth. And how much superior are the best of them? If London has any refinement, any information to sell, why should we not buy it? Would not the town of Carlisle do well to spend sixteen thousand dollars on its own education at once, if it could only find a school- master for itself? It has one man, as I hear, who takes the North American Review. That will never civilize them, I fear. Why should not the town itself take the London and Edinburgh Reviews, and put itself in com- munication with whatever sources of light and intelli- gence there are in the world? Yet Carlisle is very little behind Concord in these respects. I do not know but it spends its proportional part on education. How hap- pens it that the only libraries which the towns pos- sess are the district school libraries, — books for children only, or for readers who must needs be written down to? Why should they not have a library, if not so exten- sive, yet of the same stamp and more select than the British Museum? It is not that the town cannot well afford to buy these things, but it is unaspiring and igno- rant of its own.wants. It sells milk, but it only builds larger barns with the money which it gets for its milk. Undoubtedly every New England village is as able to surround itself with as many civilizing influences of this kind [as] the members of the English nobility; and here there need be no peasantry. If the London Times is the best newspaper in the world, why does not the village of Concord take it, that its inhabitants may read it, and not the second best? If the South Sea explorers have at length got their story ready, and Congress has neglected to make it accessible to the people, why does not Concord purchase one for its grown-up children ? ' Parrot in his “Journey to Ararat,” speaking of the difficulty of reaching it owing to the lateness of the sea- son, says of the surrounding country, “As early even as the month of June vegetable life becomes in a man- ner extinct, from the combined influence of the sun’s rays, and the aridity of the atmosphere and soil: the plains and mountain-sides, being destitute of both wood and water, have no covering but a scanty and burnt herbage, the roots of which are so rarely visited by a refreshing shower that the reparatory power of nature is all but lost, while the active animal kingdom seeks protection against the heat and drought either by bur- rowing in the earth, or retiring to the cool and inac- cessible retreats in Caucasus and the mountains of Asia Minor.”’ This reminds me of what I have observed even in our own summers. With us, too, “vegetable life becomes in a manner extinct” by the end of June, and the beholder is impressed as if “the reparatory power of nature [were] all but lost.”’ 2 p. M. — Rowed down the river to Ball’s Hill. The maples by the riverside look very green yet, — have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost. Not so on the uplands. The river is so low that, off N. Barrett’s shore, some low islands are exposed, covered with a green grass like mildew. There are all kinds of boats chained to trees and stumps by the river- side, — some from Boston and the salt [water], — but I think that none after all is so suitable and convenient as the simple flat-bottomed and light boat that has long been made here by the farmers themselves. They are better adapted to the river than those made in Boston. From Ball’s Hill the Great Meadows, now smoothly shorn, have a quite imposing appearance, so spacious and level. There is so little of this level land in our midst. There is a shadow on the sides of the hills sur- rounding (a cloudy day), and where the meadow meets them it is darkest. The shadow deepens down the woody hills and is most distinctly dark where they meet the meadow line. Now the sun in the west is coming out and lights up the river a mile off, so that it shines with a white light like a burnished silver mirror. The poplar tree seems quite important to thescene. The pastures are so dry that the cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way. The patches of sunlight on the meadow look luridly yellow, as if flames were traversing it. It is a day for fishermen. The farmers are gathering in their corn. The Jfikania scandens and the button-bushes and the pickerel-weed are sere and flat with frost. We looked down the long reach toward Carlisle Bridge. The river, which is as low as ever, still makes a more than respectable appear- ance here and is of generous width. Rambled over the hills toward Tarbell’s. The huckleberry bushes appear to be unusually red this fall, reddening these hills. We scared a calf out of the meadow, which ran like a ship tossed on the waves, over the hills toward Tarbell’s. They run awkwardly, red oblong squares tossing up and down like a vessel in a storm, with great commo- tion.’ We fell into the path, printed by the feet of the calves, with no cows’ tracks. The note of the yellow- hammer is heard from the edges of the fields. The soap- wort gentian looks like a flower prematurely killed by the frost. The soil of these fields looks as yellowish- white as the corn-stalks themselves. Tarbell’s hip- roofed house looked the picture of retirement, — of cottage size, under its noble elm, with its heap of apples before the door and the wood coming up within a few rods, —it being far off the road. The smoke from his chimney so white and vapor-like, like a winter scene. The lower limbs of the willows and maples and button- bushes are covered with the-black and dry roots of the water-marigold and the ranunculi, plants with filiform, capillary, root-like submerged leaves.

A considerable part of the last two nights and yesterday, a steady and rather warm rain, such as we have not had for a long time. This morning it is still completely overcast and drizzling a little. Flocks of small birds — apparently sparrows, bobolinks (or some bird of equal size with a pencilled breast which makes a musical clucking), and piping goldfinches — are flitting about like leaves and hopping up on to the bent grass stems in the garden, letting themselves down to the heavy heads, either shaking or picking out a seed or two, then alighting to pick it up. I am amused to see them hop up on to the slender, drooping grass stems; then slide down, or let themselves down, as it were foot over foot, with great fluttering, till they can pick at the head and release a few seeds; then alight to pick them up. They seem to prefer a coarse grass which grows like a weed in the garden between the potato-hills, also the amaranth.’ It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. They say that this has been a good year to raise turkeys, it has been so dry. So that we shall have something to be thankful for. Hugh Miller, in his “Old Red Sandstone,” speaking of ‘“‘the consistency of style which obtains among the ichthyolites of this formation” and the “microscopic beauty of these ancient fishes,”’ says: “The artist who sculptured the cherry stone consigned it to a cabinet, and placed a microscope beside it; the microscopic beauty of these ancient fish was consigned to the twi- light depths of a primeval ocean. There is a feeling which at times grows upon the painter and the statuary, as if the perception and love of the beautiful had been sublimed into a kind of moral sense. Art comes to be pursued for its own sake; the exquisite conception in the mind, or the elegant and elaborate model, becomes all in all to the worker, and the dread of criticism or the appetite of praise almost nothing. And thus, through the influence of a power somewhat akin to conscience, but whose province is not the just and the good, but the fair, the refined, the exquisite, have works prosecuted in solitude, and never intended for the world, been found fraught with loveliness.” The hesitation with which this is said — to say nothing of its simplicity — betrays a latent infidelity more fatal far than that of the “ Vestiges of Creation,” which in another work this author endeavors to correct. He describes that as an exception which is in fact the rule. The supposed want of harmony between “the perception and love of the beautiful” and a delicate moral sense betrays what kind of beauty the writer has been conversant with. He speaks of his work becoming all in all to the worker, his rising above the dread of criticism and the appetite of praise, as if these were the very rare exceptions in a great artist’s life, and not the very definition of it. 2 p. Ms— To Conantum. A warm, damp, mistling day, without much wind. The white pines in Hubbard’s Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mot- tled, — reminding me of some plants like the milkweed, expanding with maturity and pushing off their downy seeds. They have a singularly soft look. For a week or ten days I have ceased to look for new flowers or carry my botany in my pocket. The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. I see where the squirrels have carried off the ears of corn more than twenty rods from the corn-field into the woods. A little further on, beyond Hubbard’s Brook, I saw a gray squirrel with an ear of yellow corn a foot long sitting on the fence, fifteen rods from the field. He dropped the corn, but continued to sit on the rail, where I could hardly see him, it being of the same color with himself, which I have no doubt he was well aware of. He next took to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal himself behind the stem, hanging per- fectly still there till I passed, his fur being exactly the color of the bark. When I struck the tree and tried to frighteu him, he knew better than to run to the next tree, there being no continuous row by which he might escape; but he merely fled higher up and put so many leaves between us that it was difficult to discover him. When I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared entirely, though I kept the best watch I could, and stood close to the foot of the tree. They are wonder- fully cunning.’ The Eupatorium purpureum is early killed by frost and stands now all dry and brown by the sides of other herbs like the goldenrod and tansy, which are quite green and in blossom. The railroads as much as anything appear to have unsettled the farmers. Our young Concord farmers and their young wives, hearing this bustle about them, seeing the world all going by as it were, — some daily to the cities about their business, some to California, — plainly cannot make up their minds to live the quiet, retired, old-fashioned, country-farmer’s life. They are impatient if they live more than a mile from a railroad. While all their neighbors are rushing to the road, there are few who have character or bravery enough to live | off the road. He is too well aware what is going on in the world not to wish to take some part in it. I was reminded of this by meeting S. Tuttle in his wagon. The pontederia, which apparently makes the mass of the weeds by the side of the river, is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it. The mist is so thin that it is like haze or smoke in the air, imparting a softness to the landscape. Sitting by the spruce swamp in Conant’s Grove, I am reminded that this is a perfect day to visit the swamps, with its damp, mistling, mildewy air, so solemnly still. There are the spectre-like black spruces hanging with usnea moss, and in the rear rise the dark green pines and oaks on the hillside, touched here and there with livelier tints where a maple or birch may stand, this so luxuriant vegetation standing heavy, dark, sombre, like mould in a cellar. The peculiar tops of the spruce are seen against this. I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays, who make a great cry about nothing. The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, and the button-bush. The balls of the last appear not half grown this season, — probably on account of the drought, — and now they are killed by frost. This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant. They ray out around the dry scape and flower, which still remain, resting on rich uneven beds of a coarse reddish moss, through which the small- flowered andromeda puts up, presenting altogether a most rich and luxuriant appearance to the eye. Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet. I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher-plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these. Old Josselyn called this “ Hollow-leaved Lavender.” No other plant, methinks, that we have is so remarkable and singular. Here was a large hornets’ nest, which when I went to take and first knocked on it to see if anybody was at home, out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. IT do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day, unless because the swamp is warmer. They were all within and not work~ ing, however. IT picked up two arrowheads in the field beyond. What honest, homely, earth-loving, unaspiring houses they used to live in! Take.that on Conantum for in- stance, —-so low you can put your hand on the eaves behind. There are few whose pride could stoop to enter such a house to-day. And then the broad chimney, built for comfort, not for beauty, with no coping of bricks to catch the eye, no alto or basso relievo. The mist has now thickened into a fine rain, and I retreat.