6 October 1851 – 12 October 1851

Monday. 12 m.— To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. It is of a light sky-blue, alternating with smoother white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently, like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed, more gloriously and heavenly fair and pure than the sky itself. It is something more celestial than the sky above it. I never saw any water look so celestial. I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln. We have names for the rivers of hell, but none for the rivers of heaven, unless the Milky Way be one. It is such a smooth and shining blue, like a panoply of sky-blue plates.’ Our dark and muddy river has such a tint in this case as I might expect Walden or White Pond to exhibit, if they could be seen under similar circumstances, but Walden seen from Fair Haven is, if I remember, of a deep blue color tinged with green. Cerulean? Such water as that river reach appears to me of quite incalculable value, and the man who would blot that out of his prospect for a sum of money does not otherwise than to sell heaven. George Thatcher, having searched an hour in vain this morning to find a frog, caught a pickerel with a mullein leaf. The white ash near our house, which the other day was purple or mulberry-color, is now much more red. 7.30 p.M.— ‘To Fair Haven Pond by boat, the moon four-fifths full, not a cloud in the sky; paddling all the way. The water perfectly still, and the air almost, the former gleaming like oil in the moonlight, with the moon’s disk reflected in it. When we started, saw some fishermen kindling their fire for spearing by the riverside. It was a lurid, reddish blaze, contrasting with the white light of the moon, with dense volumes of black smoke from the burning pitch pine roots rolling upward in the form of an inverted pyramid. The blaze reflected in the water, almost as distinct as the substance. It looked like tarring a ship on the shore of the Styx or Cocytus. For it is still and dark, notwithstanding the moon, and no sound but the crackling of the fire. The fishermen can be seen only ‘near at hand, though their fire is visible far away; and then they appear as dusky, fuliginous figures, half en- veloped in smoke, seen only by their enlightened sides. Like devils they look, clad in old coats to defend them- selves from the fogs, one standing up forward holding the spear ready to dart, while the smoke and flames are blown in his face, the other paddling the boat slowly and silently along close to the shore with almost imper- ceptible motion. The river appears indefinitely wide; there is a mist rising from the water, which increases the indefinite- ness. A high bank or moonlit hill rises at a distance over the meadow on the bank, with its sandy gullies and clamshells exposed where the Indians feasted. The shore line, though close, 1s removed by the eye to the side of the hill. It is at high-water mark. It is continued till it meets the hill. Now the fisherman’s fire, left behind, acquires some thick rays in the distance and becomes a star. As surely as sunlight falling through an irregular chink makes a round figure on the opposite wall, so the blaze at a distance appears a star. Such is the effect of the atmosphere. The bright sheen of the moon is con- stantly travelling with us, and is seen at the same angle in front on the surface of the pads; and the reflection of its disk in the rippled water by our boat-side appears like bright gold pieces falling on the river’s counter. This coin is incessantly poured forth as from some unseen horn of plenty at our side. (I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell.) I do not know but the weirdness of the gleaming oily surface is enhanced by the thin fog. A few water-bugs are seen glancing in our course. I shout like a farmer to his oxen, — a short barking shout, — and instantly the woods on the eastern shore take it up, and the western hills a little up the stream; and so it appears to rebound from one side the river valley to the other, till at length I hear a farmer call to his team far up as Fair Haven Bay, whither we are bound. We pass through reaches where there is no fog, perhaps where a little air is stirring. Our clothes are almost wet through with the mist, as if we sat in water. Some portions of the river are much warmer than others. In one instance it was warmer in the midst of the fog than in a clear reach. In the middle of the pond we tried the echo again. First the hill to the right took it up; then further up the stream on the left; and then after a long pause, when we had almost given it up, — and the longer expected, the more in one sense unexpected and surprising it was, — we heard a farmer shout to his team in a distant valley, far up on the opposite side of the stream, much louder than the previous echo; and even after this we heard one shout faintly in some neighboring town. The third echo seemed more loud and distinct than the second. But why, I asked, do the echoes always travel up the stream? I turned about and shouted again, and then I found that they all appeared equally to travel down the stream, or perchance I heard only those that did so. As we rowed to Fair Haven’s eastern shore, a moonlit hill covered with shrub oaks, we could form no opin- ion of our progress toward it, — not seeing the water- line where it met the hill, — until we saw the weeds and sandy shore and the tall bulrushes rising above the shallow water [like] the masts of large vessels in a haven. The moon was so high that the angle of exci- dence [sic] did not permit of our seeing her reflection in the pond. As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection of every wood and hill on both sides distinctly. These answering reflections —shadow to substance—impress the voyager with a sense of harmony and symmetry, as when you fold a blot- ted paper and produce a regular figure, —a dualism which nature loves. What you commonly see is but half. Where the shore is very low the actual and reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot, and it is but a line that separates them, and the water and the sky almost flow into one another, and the shore seems to float. As we paddle up or down, we see the cabins of muskrats faintly rising from amid the weeds, and the strong odor of musk is borne to us from particular parts of the shore. Also the odor of a skunk is wafted from over the meadows or fields. The fog appears in some places gathered into a little pyramid or squad by itself, on the surface of the water. Home at ten.

This morning the fog over the river and the brooks and meadows running into it has risen to the height of forty or fifty feet. 1 p. m.— To river; by boat to Corner Bridge. A very still, warm, bright, clear afternoon. Our boat so small and low that we are close to the water.’ The muskrats all the way are now building their houses, about two thirds done. They are of an oval form (looking down on them), sloping upward from the smaller end, by which the rat apparently ascends, and composed of mouthfuls of pontederia leaf-stems (now dead), the capillaceous roots or leaves of the water-marigold ( ?) and other capillaceous-leaved water-plants, flag-root, a plant which looks like a cock’s tail or a peacock’s feather in form,” clamshells, etc., sometimes rising from amidst the dead pontederia stems or resting on the but- ton-bushes or the willows. The mouthfuls are disposed in layers successively smaller, forming a somewhat coni- cal mound. Seen at this stage they show some art and a good deal of labor. We pulled one to pieces to examine the inside. ‘There was a small cavity, which might hold two or three full-grown muskrats, just above the level of the water, quite wet and of course dark and narrow, communicating immediately with a gallery under water. There were a few pieces of the white root of some water- plant — perhaps a pontederia or a lily root — in it. There they dwell, in close contiguity to the water itself, always in a wet apartment, in a wet coat never changed, with immeasurable water in the cellar, through which is the only exit. They have reduced life to a lower scale than Diogenes. Certainly they do not fear cold, ague, or consumption. Think of bringing up a family in such a place, — worse than a Broad Street cellar. But probably these are not their breeding-places. The muskrat and the fresh-water mussel are very native to our river. The Indian, their human compeer, has departed. There is a settler whom our lowlands and our fogs do not hurt. One of the fishermen speared one last night. How long has the muskrat dined on mussels? The river mud itself will have the ague as soon as he. What occasion has he for a dentist? Their unfinished, rapidly rising nests look now like truncated cones. They seem to be all building at once in different parts of the river, and to have advanced equally far. The weeds being dead and the weather cooler, the water is more transparent. Now is the time to observe such weeds as have not been destroyed. The fishes are plainly seen. Saw a pickerel which had swallowed a smaller fish, with the tail projecting from his mouth. There is a dirty-looking weed quite submerged, with short, densely crowded, finely divided leaves, in dense masses atop, like the tops of spruce trees, more slender below. The shores for a great width are occupied by the dead leaves and stems of the pontederia, which give the river a very wild look. There is a strong-scented, green plant which looks like a fresh-water sponge or coral, clumsy-limbed like a dead tree, or a cactus. A long narrow grass like a fresh-water eel-grass. The swamp white oak on the meadow, which was blown down in the spring, is still alive, as if it had been supported by the sap in its trunk. The dirt still adheres to its roots, which are of the color of an elephant’s skin. I suppose it is the Nuphar Kalmiana which I find in blossom in deep water, though its long stem, — four feet or more, —round and gradually tapering toward the root with no leaves apparent, makes me doubt a little. Ap- parently five sepals, greenish and yellow without, yellow within, eight small petals, many stamens, stigma eight- rayed. Saw the Ardea minor walking along the shore, like a hen with long green legs. Its pencilled throat is so like the reeds and shore, amid which it holds its head erect to watch the passer, that it is difficult to discern it. You can get very near it, for it is unwilling to fly, preferring to hide amid the weeds. The lower parts of the willows and the button-bushes are black with the capillaceous leaves and stems of the water-marigold, etc.! The raw edge of the rushes (common Juncus militaris I think it is), two to four feet high, in dense fields along the shore, in various stages of decay, looks like a level rainbow skirting the water’s edge and reflected in the water, though a single one, or a few near at hand, do not exhibit very marked or distinct colors. But [at] a distance from a shore which is lined with them, the colors are very distinct and produce a pleasing effect, — first, next the water, a few inches of pink; then a faint narrow line, or halo, of yellowish; then a broad and lively green, the proper color of the rush; then a sunny yellow, pass- ing into the brown of the dead and sered tops. The dif- ferent parts of the plant from the surface of the water to its tip, when you look at the edge of a large and dense field of them, produce five distinct horizontal and par- allel bars of different colors like a level rainbow, —a rainbow-like effect, — making a pleasing border to the river in a bright day like this; and occasionally the sun- light from the rippled surface produced by our boat, reflected on them, enhances the effect. The colors pass into each other so gradually and indefinitely, as if it were the reflection of the sun falling on a mist. The rounded hills beyond the clamshells look velvety smooth as we are floating down the stream, covered with the now red blackberry vines. The oaks look light against the sky, rising story above story. I see small whitish and pinkish polygonums along the waterside. There is a great difference between this season and a month ago,— warm as this happens to be, — as between one period of your life and another. A little frost is at the bottom of it. It is a remarkable difference between night and day on the river, that there is no fog by day.

Wednesday. A slight wind now fills the air with elm leaves. The nights have been cool of late, so that a fire has been comfortable, but the last was quite warm. 2 p. M. — To the Marlborough road. This day is very warm, yet not bright like the last, but hazy. Picked up an Indian gouge on Dennis’s Hill. The foliage has lost its very bright tints now; it is more dull, looks dry, or as if burnt, even. The very ground or grass is crisped with drought, and yields a crispy sound to my feet. The woods are brownish, reddish, yellow- ish merely, excepting of course the evergreens. It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my neck-handker- chief and laborers complain of the heat. By the side of J. P. Brown’s grain-field I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. To my taste they are quite as good as chestnuts. No wonder the first men lived on acorns. Such as these are no mean food, such as they are represented to be. ‘Their sweetness is like the sweetness of bread, and to have discovered this palatableness in this neglected nut, the whole world is to me the sweeter for it. Iam related again to the first men. What can be handsomer, wear better to the eye, than the color of the acorn, like the leaves on which they fall polished, or varnished ? Tofind that acorns are edible, — it is a greater addition to one’s stock of life than would be imagined. I should be at least equally pleased if I were to find that the grass tasted sweet and nutritious. It increases the number of my friends; it diminishes the number of my foes. How easily at this season I could feed myself in the woods! There is mast for me too, as well as for the pigeon and the squirrel. This Dodonean fruit. The goldfinches are in the air. I hear a blackbird also, and see a downy woodpecker, and see and hear a hairy one. The seeds of the pasture thistle are not so buoyed up by their down as the milkweed. In the forenoon commonly I see nature only through a window; in the afternoon my study or apartment in which I sitisa vale. — The farmers are ditching, — redeeming more meadow, — getting corn, collecting their apples, threshing, etc. I cannot but believe that acorns were intended to be the food of man. They are agreeable to the palate, as the mother’s milk to the babe. The sweet acorn tree is famous and well known to the boys. There can be no question respecting the wholesomeness of this diet. This warm day is a godsend to the wasps. I see them buzzing about the broken windows of deserted build- ings, as Jenny Dugan’s,—the yellow-knotted. I smell the dry leaves like hay from the woods. Some elms are already bare. ‘The basswood here is quite sere. The pines are still shedding their leaves. ‘This brook by Jenny's is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. In the spring I saw the sucker here. It is remarkable through what narrow and shallow brooks a sucker will be seen to dart, and a trout. I perceive that some white oaks are quite red. The black oaks are yellowish. I know not surely whether the brighter red and more divided leaf is that of the red or the scarlet oak. The jointed polygonum in the Marlborough road is an in- teresting flower, it is so late, so bright a red, —though inobvious from its minuteness, — without leaves, above the sand like sorrel, mixed with other minute flowers and the empty chalices of the trichostema. I saw one blue cur! still adhering. The puffballs are split open and rayed out on the sand like five or ¢en (!) fingers. The milkweed seeds must be carried far, for it is only when a strong wind is blowing that they are loosened from their pods. An arrowhead at the desert. Spergula arvensis — corn-spurry (some call it tares) — at the acorn tree. Filled my pockets with acorns. Found another gouge on Dennis’s Hill. To have found the Indian gouges and tasted sweet acorns, — is it not enough for one afternoon? The sun set red in haze, visible fifteen minutes before setting, and the moon rose in like manner at the same time. : This evening, I am obliged to sit with my door and window open, in a thin coat, which I have not done for three weeks at least. A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village. The boys are heard at play in the street now, at 9 o'clock, in greater force and with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute. There is more fog than usual. The moon is full. The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long, low black clouds, the fog being the color of the sky.

Heard two screech owls in the night. Boiled a quart of acorns for breakfast, but found them not so palatable as raw, having acquired a bitterish taste, per- chance from being boiled with the shells and skins; yet one would soon get accustomed to this. The sound of foxhounds in the woods, heard now, at 9 A. M., in the village, reminds me of mild winter mornings. 2 p. M. — To Conantum. In the maple woods the ground is strewn with new- fallen leaves. I hear the green locust again on the alders of the causeway, but he is turned a straw-color. The warm weather has revived them. All the acorns on the same tree are not equally sweet. They appear to dry sweet. From Conantum I see them getting hay from the meadow below the Cliffs. It must have been quite dry when cut. The black ash has lost its leaves, and the white here is dry and brownish yellow, not having turned mulberry. I see half. a dozen snakes in this walk, green and striped (one very young striped one), who appear to be out enjoying the sun. They ap- pear to make the most of the last warm days of the year. The hills and plain on the opposite side of the river are covered with deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks. On Lee’s hillside by the pond, the old leaves of some pitch pines are almost of a golden-yellow hue, seen in the sunlight, — a rich autumnal look. The green are, as it were, set in the yellow. The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. Some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-col- ored they strew the ground. It is an extremely inter- esting plant, — October and November’s child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally flourishes, is untouched. It stands here in the shadow on the side of the hill,-while the sunlight from over the top of the hill lights up its top- most sprays and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other. I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. While its leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then, is indeed a spring. All the year is a spring. I see two blackbirds high overhead, going south, but I am going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms. It is a faery place. This is a part of the immortality of the soul. When I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects to extract honey from its flowers, — that per- chance they yielded no honey, —I saw a bee upon it. How important, then, to the bees this late-blossoming plant! The circling hawk steers himself through the air, like the skater, without a visible motion. The hoary cinquefoil in blossom. A large sassafras tree behind Lee’s, two feet diameter at ground. As I return over the bridge, I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring. I see a large sucker rise to the surface of the river. I hear the crickets singing loudly in the walls as they have not done (so loudly) for some weeks, while the sun is going down shorn of his rays by the haze. There is a thick bed of leaves in the road under Hubbard’s elms. This reminds me of Cato, as if the an- cients made more use of nature. He says, “Stramenta si deerunt, frondem iligneam legito, eam substernito ovibus bubusque.” (If litter is wanting, gather the leaves of the holm oak and strew them under your sheep and oxen.) In another place he says, “Circum vias ulmos serito, et partim populos, uti frondem ovibus et bubus habeas.”’ I suppose they were getting that dry meadow grass for litter. There is little or no use made. by us of the leaves of trees, not even for beds, unless it be sometimes to rake them up in the woods and cast into hog-pens or compost-heaps. Cut a stout purple cane of pokeweed.

The air this morning is full of bluebirds, and again it is spring. There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season. The blossoming of spring flowers, — not to mention the witch-hazel, — the notes of spring birds, the springing of grain and grass and other plants. Ah, I yearn toward thee, my friend, but I ne not confidence in thee. We do not believe in the same God. I am not thou; thou art not I. We trust each other to-day, but we distrust to-morrow. Even when I meet thee unexpectedly, I part from thee with disappoint- ment. Though I enjoy thee more than other men, yet I am more disappointed with thee than with others. I know a noble man; what is it hinders me from knowing him better? I know not how it is that our distrust, our hate, is stronger than our love. Here I have been on what the world would call friendly terms with one four- teen years, have pleased my imagination sometimes with loving him; and yet our hate is stronger than our love. Why are we related, yet thus unsatisfactorily? We almost are a sore to one another. Ah, I am afraid because thy relations are not my relations. Because I have experienced that in some respects we are strange to one another, strange as some wild creature. Ever and anon there will come the consciousness to mar our love that, change the theme but a hair’s breadth, and we are tragically strange to one another. We do not know what hinders us from coming together. But when I consider what my friend’s relations and acquaintances are, what his tastes and habits, then the difference between us gets named. I see that all these friends and acquaintances and tastes and habits are indeed my friend’s self. In the first place, my friend is prouder than I am, — and : am very proud, perchance. 2p. M.—To Flint’s Pond. It was the seed-vessel of the Canada snapdragon in the Marlborough road that I mistook for a new flower. This is still in bloom in the Deep Cut. The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, re- minds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard. How agreeable to the eye at this season the color of new-fallen leaves (I am going through the young woods where the locusts grow near Goose Pond), sere and crisp! When freshly fallen, with their forms and their veins still distinct, they have a certain life in them still. The chestnut leaves now almost completely cover the ground under the trees, lying up light and deep, so clean and wholesome, whether to look at or handle or smell, — the tawny leaves, nature’s color. They look as if they might all yield a wholesome tea. They are rustling down fast from the young chestnuts, leaving their bare and black- ish-looking stems. You make a great noise now walk- ing in the woods, on account of the dry leaves, especially chestnut and oak and maple, that cover the ground. I wish that we might make more use of leaves than we do. We wait till they are reduced to virgin mould. Might we not fill beds with them? or use them for fodder or litter? After they have been flattened by the snow and rain, they will be much less obvious. Now is the time to enjoy the dry leaves. Now all nature is a dried herb, full of medicinal odors. I love to hear of a preference given to one kind of leaves over another for beds. Some maples which a week ago were a mass of yellow foliage are now a fine gray smoke, as it were, and their leaves cover the ground. Plants have two states, certainly, — the green and the dry. The lespedeza and primrose heads, etc., etc., — I look on these with interest, as if they were newly blos- soming plants. Going through Britton’s clearing, I find a black snake out enjoying the sun. I perceive his lustrous greenish blackness. He holds up his head and threatens; then dashes off into the woods, making a great rustling among the leaves. ‘This might be called snake summer or snakes’ week. Our Irish washwoman, seeing me playing with the milkweed seeds, said they filled beds with that down in her country. They are not indigenous in Europe, at any rate. 3 The horned utricularia by Flint’s Pond still. There a gunner has built his bower to shoot ducks from, far out amid the rushes. The nightshade leaves have turned a very dark purple, almost steel-blue, lighter, more like mulberry, underneath, with light glossy, viscid or sticky spots above, as if covered with dew. I do not think of any other leaf of this color. The delicate pinkish leaves of the Hypericum Virginicum about the shore of the pond. The yellow leaves of the clethra mixed with the green. The stones of Flint’s Pond shore are comparatively flat, as the pond is flatter than Walden. The young trees and bushes — perhaps the birches particularly — are covered now with a small yellowish insect like a louse, spotted with green above, which cover the hat and clothes of him who goes through them. Now certainly is the season for rushes, for, most other weeds being dead, these are the more obvious along the shore of the ponds and rivers. A very fair canoe birch near Flint’s Pond. The witch-hazel loves a hillside with or without wood or shrubs. It is always pleasant to come upon it unex- pectedly as you are threading the woods in such places. Methinks I attribute to it some elvish quality apart from its fame. It affects a hillside partially covered with young copsewood. I love to behold its gray speckled stems. The leaf first green, then yellow for a short sea- son, then, when it touches the ground, tawny leather- color. As I stood amid the witch-hazels near Flint’s « Pond, a flock of a dozen chickadees came flitting and singing about me with great ado,—a most cheering and enlivening sound, — with incessant day-day-day and a fine wiry strain betweenwhiles, flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me; then suddenly, their curiosity satiated, they flit by degrees further away and disappear, and I hear with regret their retreating day-day-days. Saw a smooth sumach beyond Cyrus Smith’s, very large. The elms in the village have lost many of their leaves, and their shadows by moonlight are not so heavy as last month. Another warm night.

Sunday. Yesterday afternoon, saw by the brook-side above Emerson’s the dwarf primrose in blos- som, the Norway cinquefoil and fall dandelions which are now drying up, the houstonia, buttercups, small goldenrods, and various asters, more or less purplish. The seeds of the bidens, — without florets, — or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the in- vention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft. What are those seeds, big as skunk-cabbage seeds, amid leafless stalks like pontederia in the brooks, now bending their stems ready to plant themselves at the bottom ? The swamp-pink buds begin to show. Blackbirds and larks are about, and the flicker or yellow-hammer, so beautifully spotted (in the hand), and the goldfinches. I see a cow in the meadow with a new-dropped calf by her side. The Anemone nemorosa in bloom and the Potentilla sarmentosa, or running cinquefoil, which springs in April, now again springing. I love very well this cloudy afternoon, so sober and favorable to reflection after so many bright ones. What if the clouds shut out the heavens, provided they con- centrate my thoughts and make a more celestial heaven below! I hear the crickets plainer; I wander less in my thoughts, am less dissipated; am aware how shallow was the current of my thoughts before. Deep streams are dark, as if there were a cloud in their sky; shallow ones are bright and sparkling, reflecting the sun from their bottoms. The very wind on my cheek seems more fraught with meaning. Many maples around the edges of the meadows are now quite bare, like smoke. IT seem to be more constantly merged in nature; my intellectual life is more obedient to nature than formerly, but perchance less obedient to spirit. I have less mem- orable seasons. I exact less of myself. I am getting used to my meanness, getting to accept my low estate. O if I could be discontented with myself! If I could feel anguish at each descent! The sweet-fern is losing its leaves. I see where a field of oats has been cradled, by the railroad, — alternate white and dark green stripes, the width of a swath, run- ning across the field. I find it arises from the stubble being bent a particular way by the cradle, as the cradler advanced, and accordingly reflecting the light but one way, and if I look over the field from the other side, the first swath will be dark and the latter white. Minott shells all his corn by hand. He has got a box- ful ready for the mill. He will not winnow it, for he says the chaff (?) makes it lie loose and dry faster. He tells me that Jacob Baker, who raises as fair corn as any- body, gives all the corn of his own raising to his stock, and buys the flat yellow corn of the South for bread; and yet the Northern corn is worth the most per bushel. Minott did not like this kind of farming any better than I. Baker also buys a great quantity of “shorts” below for his cows, to make more milk. He remembers when a Prescott, who lived where E. Hosmer does, used to let his hogs run in the woods in the fall, and they grew quite fat on the acorns, etc., they found, but now there are few nuts, and it is against the law. He tells me of places in the woods which to his eyes are unchanged since he was a boy, as natural as life. He tells me, then, that in some respects he is still a boy. And yet the gray squir- rels were ten then to one now. But for the most part, he says, the world is turned upside down. P. M.— To Clifis. I hear Lincoln bell tolling for church. At first I thought of the telegraph harp. Heard at a distance, the sound of a bell acquires a certain vibratory hum, as it were from the air through which it passes, like a harp. All music is a harp music at length, as if the atmosphere were full of strings vibrating to this music. It is not the mere sound of the bell, but the humming in the air, that enchants me, just [as the] azure tint which much air or distance imparts delights the eye. It is not so much the object, as the object clothed with an azure veil. All sound heard at a great distance thus tends to produce the same music, vibrating the strings of the universal lyre. There comes to me a melody which the air has strained, which has conversed with every leaf and needle of the woods. It is by no means the sound of the bell as heard near at hand, and which at this distance I can plainly distinguish, but its vibrating echoes, that portion of the sound which the elements take up and modulate, —a sound which is very much modified, sifted, and refined before it reaches my ear. The echo is to some extent an independent sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of my voice, but it 1s in some measure the voice of the wood." A cloudy, misty day with rain more or less steady. This gentle rain is fast loosening the leaves, —I see them filling the air at the least puff, — and it is also flat- tening down the layer which has already fallen. The pines on Fair Haven have shed nearly all their leaves. Butter-and-eggs still blooms. Barrels of apples lie under the trees. The Smiths have carried their last load of peaches to market. To-day no part of the heavens is so clear and bright as Fair Haven Pond and the river. Though the air [is] quite misty, yet the island wood is distinctly reflected. Ever and anon I see the mist thickening in the south- west and concealing trees which were before seen, and revealing the direction and limits of the valleys, — pre- cursor of harder rain which soon passes again. Minott calls the stake-driver “belcher-squelcher.”’ Says he has seen them when making the noise. They go slug-toot, slug-toot, slug-toot. ‘Told me of his hunting gray squirrels with old Colonel Brooks’s hound. How the latter came into the yard one day, and he spoke to him, patted him, went into the house, took down his gun marked London, thought he would go a-squirrel-hunt- ing. Went over among the ledges, away from Brooks’s, for Tige had a dreadful strong voice and could be heard as far as a cannon, and he was plaguy afraid Brooks would hear him. How Tige treed them on the oaks on the plain below the Cliffs. He could tell by his bark when he had treed one; he never told a lie. And so he got six or seven. How Tige told him from a distance that he had got one, but when he came up he could see nothing; but still he knew that Tige never told a lie, and at length he saw his head, in a crotch high up in the top of a very tall oak, and though he did n’t expect to get him, he knocked him over.