29 May 1854 – 4 June 1854

Monday. P. M.— To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. Dan- delions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. ‘These are interest- ing as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall. There are myriads of shad-flies fluttering over the dark and still water under the hill, one every yard or two, continually de- scending, almost falling, to the surface of the water as if to drink and then, with perhaps a little difficulty, rising again, again to fall upon it, and so on. I see the same one fall and rise five or six feet thus four or five times; others rise much higher; and now comes along a large dragon-fly and snatches one. ‘This two or three times. Other smaller insects, lght-colored, are fluttering low close to the water, and in some places are swarms of small black moths. Viburnum Lentago in a warm place. The choke-cherry is leaving off to bloom, now that the black cherry is beginning. The clustered andromeda is not yet fully, 2. e. abundantly, out. The tall huckleberry in swamps is well out. In the longitudinal crevices of the white cedar bark there is much clear yellow resin. Raspberry, probably yes- terday, side of railroad, above red house. See a purple finch and hear him, — robin-like and rich warbling. S. Barrett thinks that many chubs are killed at mills, and hence are seen floating. I see no stone-heaps dis- tinctly formed yet. Saw what I thought my night-warbler, — sparrow- like with chestnut (?) stripes on breast, white or whit- ish below and about eyes, and perhaps chestnut (??) head. Stellaria longifolia, apparently apetalous (!), ten or twelve inches high, will soon open on the bank near the Ranunculus abortivus. These days it is left to one Mr. Loring to say whether a citizen of Massachusetts is a slave or not. Does any one think that Justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s decision? Such a man’s existence in this capacity under these circumstances is as impertinent as the gnat that settles on my paper. We do not ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack. Why, the United States Government never performed an act of justice in its life! And this unoffending citizen is held a prisoner by the United States soldier, of whom the best you can say is that he is a fool in a painted coat. Of what use a Governor or a Legislature? they are nothing but politicians. I have listened of late to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-in-Chief of the forces of Massachusetts. I heard only the creaking of the crickets and the hum of the insects which now fill the summer air. The Governor’s exploit is to re- view the troops on muster-days. I have seen him on horseback, with his hat off, listening to a chaplain’s prayer. That is all I have ever seen of a Governor. I think that I could manage to get along without one. When freedom is most endangered, he dwells in the deepest obscurity. A distinguished clergyman once told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pur- suits. I would recommend to him the profession of a Governor. I see the papers full of soft speeches of the mayor and the Governor and brother editors. I see the Court-House full of armed men, holding pris- oner and trying a Man, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE. It is a question about which there is great doubt.’ It is really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitates to set this man free, she is convicted. The Commissioner on her case is God.? Perhaps the most saddening aspect of the matter is the tone of almost all the Boston papers, connected with the fact that they are and have been of course sustained by a majority of their readers. They are feeble indeed, but only as sin compared with righteousness and truth. They are eminently time-serving. I have seen only the Traveller, Journal, and Post. I never look at them except at such a time as this. Their life is abject even as that of the marines. Men in any office of gov- ernment are everywhere and forever politicians. Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality, that it never secures any moral right, but always considers merely what is “expedient,” — chooses the available candidate, who, when moral right is concerned, is always the devil? Witness the President of the United States. What is the position of Massachusetts ? (Massa- chooses-it!) She leaves it to a Mr. Loring to decide whether one of her citizens is a freeman or a slave. What is the value of such a SHE’s FREEDOM AND PRoTECTION to me? Perhaps I shall so conduct that she will one day offer me the FrEEDoM or Massa- CHUSETTS in a gold casket,— made of California gold in the form of a court-house, perchance. I spurn with contempt any bribe which she or her truckling men can offer. I do not vote at the polls. I wish to record my vote here. Men profess to be surprised be- cause the devil does not behave like an angel of light. The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but, while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while (insert here all the inhumanities that pandemonium can con- ceive of), it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. Do what you will, O Government, with my mother and brother, my father and sister, I will obey your command to the letter. It will, indeed, grieve me if you hurt them, if you deliver them to overseers to be hunted by hounds, and to be whipped to death; but, nevertheless, I will peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair earth, until, perhaps, one day I shall have persuaded you to relent. Such is the attitude, such are the words of Massachusetts. Rather than thus consent to establish hell upon earth,—to be a party to this establishment, — I would touch a match to blow up earth and hell together. As I love my life, I would side with the Light and let the Dark Earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to follow me.'

Tuesday. Whiteweed. Spergularia rubra, apparently a day or two, side of railroad above red house. Yarrow. P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp and Pond. Saw a black snake, dead, four feet three inches long, slate-colored beneath. Saw what was called a Cali- fornia cat which a colored man brought home from California, — an animal at least a third smaller than a cat and shaped more like a polecat or weasel, brown- gray, with a cat-like tail of alternate black and white rings, very large ears, and eyes which were prominent, long body lke a weasel, and sleeps with its head be- tween its fore paws, curling itself about; a rank smell to it. It was lost several days in our woods, and was caught again in a tree about a crow’s nest. Ranunculus repens, perhaps a day or two; channelled peduncle and spreading calyx and conspicuously spotted leaves. The leaves of the tall buttercup are much larger and finely cut and, as it were, peltate. Pickerel are not easily detected, — such is their color, — as if they were transparent. Vetch. I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard’s Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries. In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cin- namomea, above the dead brown leaves, broad, taper- ing fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. Wood frogs skip- ping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble. Clintonia. Medeola. The last may be earlier. I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hub- bard’s Close, maybe two or three days, though not yet at Arethusa Meadow, probably on account of the recent freshet. It is so leafless that it shoots up unex- pectedly. It is all color, a little hook of purple flame projecting from the meadow into the air. Some are comparatively pale. This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower. Cotton-grass here also, probably two or three days for the same reason. Erto- phorum polystachyon var. latifolium, having rough peduncles. The twigs of the dwarf willow, now gone to seed, are thickly invested with cotton, containing little green seed-vessels, like excrement of caterpillars, and the shrubs look at a little distance like sand cherries in full bloom. These are among the downy seeds that fly. Found a ground-robin’s nest, under a tuft of dry sedge which the winter had bent down, in sprout-land on the side of Heywood Peak, perfectly concealed, with two whitish eggs very thickly sprinkled with brown; made of coarse grass and weed stems and lined with a few hairs and stems of the mahogany moss. The pink is certainly one of the finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds in my memory. It is now in its prime on the south side of the Heywood Peak, where it grows luxuriantly in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres, raying out on every side and presenting an even and regular surface of expanded flowers. I count in one such tuft, of an oval form twelve inches by eight, some three hundred fully open and about three times as many buds, — more than a thousand in all. Some tufts consist wholly of white ones with a very faint tinge of pink. This flower is as ele- gant in form as in color, though it is not fragrant. It is associated in my mind with the first heats of sum- mer, or [those] which announce its near approach. Few plants are so worthy of cultivation. The shrub oak pin- cushion (?) galls are larger, whiter, and less compact than those of the white oak. I find the linneza, and budded, in Stow’s Wood by Deep Cut. Sweet flag. Waxwork to-morrow.’ I see my um- brella toadstool on the hillside has already pierced the ground.

Old Election. Cold weather. Many go a-fishing to-day in earnest, and one gets forty pouts in river. Locust. P. M. — To Miles Meadow by boat. A cold southeast wind. Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season. Saw a greater telltale, and this is the only one I have seen probably; distinguished by its size. It is very watchful, but not timid, allowing me to come quite near, while it stands on the lookout at the water’s edge. It keeps nodding its head with an awkward jerk, and wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe, or something like that. It acts the part of the telltale, though there are no birds here, as if [it] were with a flock. Remarkable as a sentinel for other birds. I think I see a few clams come up. The mountain sumach at the Cliffs is much more forward than at Hubbard’s, and perhaps is earlier to leaf than the button-bush. Alternate cornel, apparently yester- day. Cockspur thorn is well out; how long? Maidenhair fern, how handsome!

4.80 a. M. — To Hill. Fever-root. The umbrella toadstool yesterday, and now decaying. A smaller one. It was so cold last night and still that I surely expected a frost and covered all our melons. But either the wind changed or clouds came over in the night, and there was no frost here. Here is another cool day. I sit with window shut and walk with a thick coat, as yesterday. Do we not always have these changes about the first of June? P. M. — To Bare Hill via Walden road and Goose Pond. Below the almshouse I see a small sparrow, not larger than the field sparrow, with a white line down the middle of the head, a tawny throat and breast, a yellow spot over the eye and another on the forward part of the wings, flesh-colored legs, upper mandible dusky, and wings dark with faint lines of white. Un- doubtedly the Fringilla passerina. There were two. Its note was that of my seringo, but very faint and short, sitting on the wall or fence-post. I see caterpillars, now full-grown, clustered upon their great nests on stripped cherry trees in the woods. 1854| OAK GALLS 321 Hear my evergreen-forest note, sounding rather rasp- ingly as usual, where there are large oaks and pines mingled, — er-er te, te ter twee, or er te, te ter twe.' It is very difficult to discover now that the leaves are grown, as it frequents the tops of the trees. But I get a glimpse of its black throat and, I think, yellow head. This and the red-eye and wood pewee are singing now at mid- day. The pincushion galls of the shrub oaks have but little color compared with those of the white oak, and are now turning brown. The shrub oak ones are larger but plainer, less spotted, and less distinctly spotted, than the others. Galls are a surprising pro- duction of nature, suggesting a union or connivance of two kingdoms, the animal and vegetable, to produce. Many, like the ordinary black oak-balls (I see some fully grown), seem as natural to the tree as its proper fruit, and plainly anticipated by its whole economy. We hesitate to pronounce them abortions. Their grub is a foster-child of the oak. I see equally if not more remarkable and regular ones on a black shrub oak, of this form, attached to a leaf, green, — a core like this: Bee i neg 25 filled with | ' Nafiren air, they ~. mee ' ios burst with a puff when pressed. I see marks of a frost last night in sprout-land hollows ; young white oaks and hickories, and some * [A good rendering of the song of the black-throated green war- bler.] other oaks even, have been touched, and, though not yet black, their leaves are crisped and come off. In wood-paths and elsewhere I now see countless dragon- flies which have lately taken wing, — some of those pretty little blue ones, and various colors. One of those biting flies stabs my finger severely, wings half black, with a green front. Within little more than a fortnight the woods, from bare twigs, have become a sea of verdure, and young shoots have contended with one another in the race. The leaves have unfurled all over the country like a parasol. Shade is produced, and the birds are con- cealed and their economies go forward uninterruptedly, and a covert is afforded to the animals generally. But thousands of worms and insects are preying on the leaves while they are young and tender. Myriads of little parasols are suddenly spread all the country over, to shield the earth and the roots of the trees from parching heat, and they begin to flutter and rustle in the breeze. Checkerberry shoots in forward places are now just fit to eat, they are so young and tender. In a long walk I have found these somewhat refreshing. From Bare Hill there is a bluish mist on the landscape, giving it a glaucous appearance. Now I see gentlemen and ladies sitting at anchor in boats on the lakes in the calm afternoons, under para- sols, making use of nature, not always accumulating money. The farmer hoeing is wont to look with scorn and pride on a man sitting in a motionless boat a whole half-day, but he does not realize that the object of his own labor is perhaps merely to add another dollar to 1854) THE BIRTH OF SHADOW 323 his heap, nor through what coarseness and inhumanity to his family and servants he often accomplishes this. He has an Irishman or a Canadian working for him by the month; and what, probably, is the lesson that he is teaching him by precept and example? Will it make that laborer more of a man? this earth more like heaven? ‘The veiny-leaved hawkweed to-morrow. I see the sand cherry in puffs like the Canada plum in some places.

. Friday. P. M.— Up Assabet to Castilleja and Annursnack. While waiting for Mother and Sophia I look now from the yard to the waving and slightly glaucous- tinged June meadows, edged by the cool shade — gelid —of shrubs and trees,—-a waving shore of shady bays and promontories,— yet different from the August shades. It is beautiful and elysian. The air has now begun to be filled with a bluish haze. These virgin shades of the year, when everything is tender, fresh and green, — how full of promise! pro- mising bowers of shade in which heroes maj repose themselves! I would fain-be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves. I find sanicle just out on the Island. The black willows are already beautiful, and the hemlocks with their bead-work of new green. Are these not kingbird days, when, in clearer first June days full of lght, this aérial, twittering bird flutters from willow to wil- low and swings on the twigs, showing his white-edged tail? The Azalea nudiflora has about done, or there was apparently little of it. I see some breams’ nests near my old bathing-place above the stone-heaps, with sharp, yellow, sandy edges, like a milk-pan from within, eS ee showing consider- able art (?) as well as labor. Also there are three or four small stone- heaps formed. We went near to the stone bridge and crossed direct via the house-leek, of which I brought home a bunch. No Stellaria longifolia nor Ranunculus abortivus to be found yet in bloom, though probably some of the first, apetalous, have opened now. Lamb- kill. The Painted-Cup Meadow is all lit up with ferns, on its springy slopes. The handsome flowering fern, now rapidly expanding and fruiting at the same time, colors these moist slopes afar with its now commonly reddish fronds. And then there are the interrupted and the cinnamon ferns in very handsome and regular tufts, and the brakes standing singly and more backward. The rue, just budded, smells remarkably like a skunk and also like a rank dog. Strange affinity! Took tea at Mrs. Barrett’s. When we returned to our boat at 7 p. m., I noticed first, to my surprise, that the river was all alive with leaping fish, their heads seen continually darted above water, and they were large fish, too. Looking up I found that the whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies. It was a great flight of ephemere. It was not so when I landed an hour and a half before. They extended as high as I could see. It was like a dense snow-storm, and all (with very few exceptions) flying as with one consent up the stream. Many coupled in the air, and many more with the bodies curved. They reached a mile or more from the stone-heaps to the mouth of the Assabet, but were densest where there were woods on both sides, whether they came out of them, or they made the air more still for them. , Those I examined had three very long streamers behind, the two outside about an inch and a quarter. The fishes I saw rise for such as were struggling on the water close to the boat were, I am pretty sure, suckers. This is like what the French fishermen call “manna.” There were also swarms of small black millers close above the surface, and other small ones. Several dead suckers were floating. It seemed as if the suckers were now ascending the river. In the air there was one or more at least to every foot. Apparently this phe- nomenon reached on this stream as far as it was wooded. Caraway naturalized, and out apparently two or three days, in S. Barrett’s front yard.

Saturday. 9 a.m.—To Fair Haven with Blake and Brown. A very warm day, without a breeze. A kingbird’s nest in a fork of a black willow. Going up Fair Haven Hill, the blossoms of the huckleberries and blueberries imparted a sweet scent to the whole hillside. The cis- tus is well out on the Cliffs; maybe several days. At Lee’s Cliff, where we dined, the oxalis pretty early (?). Hear the first, but a faint, locust. On the pond, played a long [time] with the bubbles which we made with our paddles on the smooth, perhaps unctuous, surface, in which little hemispherical cases we saw ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head). These lasted sometimes a minute before they burst. They reminded me more of Italy than of New England. Crossed to Baker Farm and Mt. Misery. To-day, having to seek a shady and the most airy place, at length we were glad when the east wind arose, ruffled the water and cooled the air, and wafted us homeward. Reflected how many times other similar bubbles, which had now burst, had re- flected here the Indian, his canoe and paddle, with the same faithfulness that they now image me and my boat.

8 a. M.— Up Assabet to Barbarea Shore with Blake and Brown. Brown speaks of a great brown moth, — ‘probably emperor moth, — which came out in Worcester a few days ago. I see under the window, half dead, a large sphinx-/zke moth which apparently flew last night. The surface of the still water nowadays with a kind of lint, looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? In many places it reaches quite across the river. It is interesting to distinguish the dif- ferent surfaces, — here broken into waves and sparkling with light, there, where covered with this linty dust or film, merely undulating without breaking, and there quite smooth and stagnant. I see in one place a sharp 1854) . THE RIVER CLAMS 327 and distinct line, as if there were a cobweb on the water, between the clear and ruffled water and the stagnant filmy part, as if it were a slightly raised seam; and particles of lint (?) are continually gliding in from the clear space and arranging themselves along the edge of the scum or film. These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the wed-cream of song. Itis modulated shade. I see now here and there deep furrows in the sandy bottom, two or three inches wide, leading from the middle of the river toward the side, and a clam on its edge at the end of each. ‘These are distinct whiter lines. Plainly, then, about these times the clams are coming up to the shore, and I have caught them in the act. I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines. The lower and horizontal parts of the shaggy button-bushes, now left bare, are covered thickly with dry brown- paper confervee, for the most part bleached almost white. It is very abundant, and covers these stems more thickly than clothes on a line. P. M. — To Walden. Now is the time [to] observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. I stood over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obo- vate and serrate leaves, in the woods this p. m., as if it were a rare flower. Now the various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. The chinquapin and black shrub oak are such leaves as I fancy crowns were made of. And in the washing breeze the lighter under sides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape. Perhaps, on the whole, as most of the under sides are of a glaucous hue, they add to the glaucous mistiness of the atmosphere, which now has begun to prevail. The mountains are hidden. Methinks the first dry spell or drought may be beginning. The dust is powdery in the street, and we do not always have dew in the night. The cracks in the ground made by the frost in the winter are still quite distinct. In some cases fame is perpetually false and unjust. Or rather I should say that she never recognizes the simple heroism of an action, but only as connected with its apparent consequence. It praises the inter- ested energy of the Boston Tea Party, but will be comparatively silent about the more bloody and dis- interestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court-House, simply because the latter was unsuccessful. Fame is not just. It never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs. The truest acts of heroism never reach her ear, are never published by her trumpet.’