26 October 1857 – 1 November 1857

Hard rain in the night and almost steady rain through the day, the second day. Wind still easterly or northeasterly. P. M. — Round by Puffer’s via Clamshell. A driving east or northeast storm. I can see through the drisk only a mile. The river is getting partly over the meadows at last, and my spirits rise with it. Me- thinks this rise of the waters must affect every thought and deed in the town. It qualifies my sentence and life. I trust there will appear in this Journal some flow, some gradual filling of the springs and raising of the streams, that the accumulating grists may be ground. A storm is a new, and in some respects more active, life in nature. Larger migrating birds make their ap- pearance. They, at least, sympathize with the move- ments of the watery element and the winds. I see two great fish hawks (possibly blue herons) slowly beating northeast against the storm, by what a curious tie circling ever near each other and in the same direction, as if you might expect to find the very motes in the air to be paired; two long undulating wings conveying a feathered body through the misty atmosphere, and this inseparably associated with another planet of the same species. I can just glimpse their undulating lines. Damon and Pythias they must be. The waves beneath, which are of kindred form, are still more social, multitudinous, dvjpi§uov. Where is my mate, beating against the storm with me? They fly accord- ing to the valley of the river, northeast or southwest. I start up snipes also at Clamshell Meadow. This weather sets the migratory birds in motion and also makes them bolder. These regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be —they were at first, of course — simply and plamly phenomena or phases of my life. The seasons and all their changes are in me. I see not a dead eel or floating snake, or a gull, but it rounds my life and is like a line or accent in its poem. Almost I believe the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks again, were I not here. After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are. I would have nothing sub- tracted. I can imagine nothing added. My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! Going along the road toward the beomyces, I see, as I think, a space a yard or two square where the bank has been [burnt] over by accident, by some travel- ler or sportsman. Even as I stand within four or five feet I take it to be so. It was the fallen leaves of the Salix tristis, thickly covering the ground, so black, with an ashy reflection, that they look exactly like cinders of leaves. And the small twigs were also black- ened and inconspicuous; I could hardly detect them. Just the right mingling of black and ash-color. It was a wet day, which made them look blacker. Mere evergreen mossy banks, as that by this road in the woods, now more attract us when greenness Is so rare. ‘At the hewing-place on the flat above, many spar- rows are flitting past amid the birches and sallows. They are chiefly Fringilla hyemalis. How often they may be [seen] thus flitting along in a straggling manner from bush to bush, so that the hedgerow will be all alive with them, each uttering a faint chip from time to time, as if to keep together, bewildering you so that you know not if the greater part are gone by or still to come. One rests but a moment on the tree before you and is gone again. You wonder if they know whither they are bound, and how their leader is ap- pointed. The pitch pine leaves not yet quite fallen. Yellow- ish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches. Those sparrows, too, are thoughts I have. They come and go; they flit by quickly on their migrations, uttering only a faint chip, I know not whither or why exactly. One will not rest upon its twig for me to scru- tinize it. The whole copse will be alive with my ram- bling thoughts, bewildering me by their very multi- tude, but they will be all gone directly without leaving me a feather. My loftiest thought is somewhat like an eagle that suddenly comes into the field of view, sug- gesting great things and thrilling the beholder, as if it were bound hitherward with a message for me; but it comes no nearer, but circles and soars away, growing dimmer, disappointing me, till it is lost behind a cliff or a cloud. Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray.

P. M. — Up river. The third day of steady rain; wind northeast. The river has now risen so far over the meadows that I can just cross Hubbard’s Great Meadow in my boat. Stedman Buttrick tells me that a great many ducks and large yellow-legs have been killed within a day or two. It is rather late for ducks generally. He says that the spruce swamp beyond Farmer’s is called Fox Castle Swamp and has been a great place for foxes. Some days ago he was passing under a black oak on his land, when he saw the dust of acorn shells (or cups ?) falling about him. Looking up, he saw as many as twenty (!) striped squirrels busily running out to ends of the twigs, biting off the nuts, running back and taking off the shells (cups?) and stowing the nuts away in their cheeks. I go up the river as far as Hubbard’s Second Grove, in order to share the general commotion and excite- ment of the elements, — wind and waves and rain. A half-dozen boats at the landing were full, and the waves beating over them. It was hard work getting at and hauling up and emptying mine. It was a rod and a half from the water’s edge. Now look out for your rails and other fencing-stuff and loose lumber, lest it be floated off. I sailed swiftly, standing up and tipping my boat to make a keel of its side, though at first it was hard to keep off a lee shore. I looked for cranberries drifted up on the lee side of the meadows, but saw few. It was exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. The reign of water now begins, and how it gambols and revels! Waves are its leaves, foam its blossoms. How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other! Schools of porpoises and blackfish are only more animated waves and have acquired the gait and game of the sea itself. The high wind and the dash- ing waves are very inspiriting. ‘The clumps of that “west of rock” willow and a discolor are still thinly leaved, with peculiar silvery-yellow leaves in this light. The rising water is now rolling and washing up the river wreck of sparganium, etc., etc. Wool-grass tops appear thickly above the flood. When I turn about, it requires all my strength and skill to push the boat back again. I must keep it pointed directly in the teeth of the wind. [If it turns a little, the wind gets the advantage of me and I lose ground. The wind being against the stream makes it rise the faster, and also prevents the driftwood from coming down. How many a meadow my boat’s bottom has rubbed over! I might perhaps consult with it respect- ing cranberry vines, cut-grass, pitcher-plant, etc., etc. I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts. The Indians, it is said, did not look for winter till the springs were full. Long-continued rain and wind come to settle the ac- counts of the year, filling the springs for winter. The ducks and other fowl, reminded of the lateness thus, go by. The few remaining leaves come fluttering down. The snow-flea (as to-day) is washed out of the bark of meadow trees and covers the surface of the flood. The winter’s wood is bargained for and being hauled. 'This storm reminds men to put things on a winter footing. There is not much more for the farmer to do in the fields. The real facts of a poet’s life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. I mean that the very scheme and form of his poetry (so called) is adopted at a sacrifice of vital truth and poetry. Shakespeare has left us his fancies and imaginings, but the truth of his life, with its becoming circumstances, we know nothing about. ‘The writer is reported, the liver not at all. Shakespeare’s house! how hollow it is! No man can conceive of Shakespeare in that house. But we want the basis of fact, of an actual life, to complete our Shakespeare, as much as a statue wants its: pedes- tal. A poet’s life with this broad actual basis would be as superior to Shakespeare’s as a lichen, with its base or thallus, 1s superior in the order of being to a fungus. The Littleton Giant brought us a load of coal within the week. He appears deformed and weakly, though naturally well formed. He does not nearly stand up straight. His knees knock together; they touch when he is standing most upright, and so reduce his height at least three inches. He is also very round-shouldered and stooping, probably from the habit of crouching to conceal his height. He wears a low hat for the same purpose. The tallest man looks like a boy beside him. He has a seat to his wagon made on purpose for him. He habitually stops before all doors. You wonder what his horses think of him, — that a strange horse is not afraid of him. His voice is deep and full, but mild, for he is quite modest and retiring, — really a worthy man, ’tis said. Pity he could n’t have been undertaken by a committee in season and put through, like the boy Safford, been well developed bodily and also mentally, taught to hold up his head and not mind people’s eyes or remarks. It is remarkable that the giants have never correspondingly great hearts.

P. M. — To Conantum. To-day it does not rain, but is cloudy all the day. Large oak leaves have been falling for a week at least, but the oaks are not yet reduced to their winter state. On the causeway I see fox-colored sparrows flitting along in the willows and alders, uttering a faint cheep, and tree sparrows with them. On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright iris. (I doubt if some of the brown-headed blackbirds I have seen within three weeks were grackles.) As I sat at the wall-corner, high on Conantum, the sky generally covered with continuous cheerless-look- ing slate-colored clouds, except in the west, I saw, through the hollows of the clouds, here and there the blue appearing. All at once a low-slanted glade of sun- light from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive, like a halo, a glory in which only the just deserved to live. It was as if the air, purified by the long storm, re- flected these few rays from side to side with a com- plete illumination, like a perfectly polished mirror, while the effect was greatly enhanced by the contrast with the dull dark clouds and sombre earth. As if Nature did not dare at once to let in the full blaze of the sun to this combustible atmosphere. It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might have been performed. At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived. No perfectly fair weather ever offered such an arena for noble acts. It was such a light as we behold but dwell not in! In each case, every recess was filled and lit up with this pure white light. The maples were Potter’s, far down stream, but I dreamed I walked like a liberated spirit in their maze. The withered meadow-grass was as soft and glorious as paradise. And then it was remarkable that the light-giver should have revealed to me, for all life, the heaving white breasts of those two ducks within this glade of light. It was extinguished and relit as it travelled. Tell me precisely the value and significance of these transient gleams which come sometimes at the end of the day, before the close of the storm, final disper- sion of the clouds, too late to be of any service to the works of man for the day, and notwithstanding the whole night after may be overcast! Is not this a lan- guage to be heard and understood? There is, in the brown and gray earth and rocks, and the withered leaves and bare twigs at this season, a purity more correspondent to the light itself than summer offers. These two ducks, as near as I could see with my glass, were all dark above, back and wings, but had bright white breasts and necks. They were swimming and tacking about in the midst of the pond, with their heads half the time plunged beneath the surface. Were they grebes? or young sheldrakes? Even at this distance they warily withdraw still further off till I am gone. Both aspleniums and the small botrychium are still fresh, as if they were evergreen. The latter sheds pollen. The former are most fresh under the shelter of rocks. I look up and see a male marsh hawk with his clean- cut wings, that has just skimmed past above my head, —not at all disturbed, only tilting his body a little, now twenty rods off, with demi-semi-quaver of his wings. He is a very neat flyer. Again, I hear the scream of a hen-hawk, soaring and circling onward. I do not often see the marsh hawk thus. What a regular figure this fellow makes on high, with his broad tail and broad wings! Does he perceive me, that he rises higher and circles to one side? He goes round now one full circle without a flap, tilting his wing a little; then flaps three or four times and rises higher. Now he comes on like a billow, screaming. Steady as a planet in its orbit, with his head bent down, but on second’ thought that small sprout-land seems worthy of a longer scrutiny, and he gives one circle backward over it. His scream is somewhat like the whinnering of a horse, if it is not rather a split squeal. It is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? Is it to scare his prey, that he may see by its motion where it is, or to inform its mate or companion of its where- abouts? Now he crosses the at present broad river steadily, deserving to have one or two rabbits at least to swing about him. What majesty there is in this small bird’s flight! The hawks are large-souled. Those late grapes on Blackberry Steep are now as ripe as ever they will be. They are sweet and shrivelled but on the whole poor. They ripen there the latter part of October. The white pine needles on the ground are already turned considerably redder. The pitch pines, which are yellower than the white when they fall, are three quarters fallen. I see some which look exactly lke bamboo, very prettily barred with brown every tenth of an inch or so. Going up the cliffy hillside, just north of the witch- hazel, I see a vigorous young apple tree, which, planted by birds or cows, has shot up amid the rocks and woods, and has much fruit on it and more beneath it, unin- jured by the frosts, now when all other fruits are gathered. It is of a rank, wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and makes an impression, at least, of thorni- ness. The fruit is hard and green, but looks like pala- table winter fruit; some dangling on the twigs, but more half buried in the wet leaves, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner, Lee, knows no- thing of it. There is no hand to pluck its fruit; it is only gnawed by squirrels, I perceive. It has done double duty, — not only borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this is such a fruit! Bigger than many berries, and carried home will be sound and palatable, perchance, next spring. Who knows but this chance wild fruit may be equal to those kinds which the Romans and the English have so prized, — may yet become the favorite of the nations? When I go by this shrub, thus late and hardy, and its dangling fruit strikes me, I respect the tree and am grateful for Nature’s bounty. Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it [is] so noble a fruit. Planted by a bird on a wild and rocky hillside, it bears a fruit, perchance, which foreign potentates shall hear of and send for, though the virtues of the owner of the soil may never be heard of beyond the limits of his village. It may be the choicest fruit of its kind. Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus. It is a prince in disguise, perhaps." There is, apparently, limestone just above this apple tree. I see pignuts which squirrels have industriously gnawed, the thick rind closely adhering, so that at last they are left brown and very rough; but in no case is the shell cut quite through, for, as I find, they con- tain no meat, but, under a shell of double thickness, a mere dry brown skin, and it seems the squirrels knew this! Is that small fern (still partly green) Aspidiwm cristatum, at Lee’s Cliff, northwest of the witch- hazel ? Suppose I see a single green apple, brought to per- fection on some thorny shrub, far in a wild pasture where no cow has plucked it. It is an agreeable sur- prise. What chemistry has been at work there? It affects me somewhat like a work of art. I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit! What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate, and only the most persistent and strongest genius prevails, defends itself, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth; and’ that fruit, though somewhat smaller, perchance, is essentially the same in flavor and quality as if it had grown in a garden. ‘That fruit seems all the sweeter and more palatable even for the very difficulties it has contended with. Here, on this rugged and woody hillside, has grown an apple tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth like the pines and oaks. Most fruits we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches (here), and melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting, but the apple emulates man’s independence and enterprise. Like him to some extent, it has migrated to this new world and is ever here and there making its way amid the aboriginal trees. It accompanies man like the ox and dog and horse, which also sometimes run wild and maintain themselves. | Spite of wandering kine and other adverse circum- stance, that scorned shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert, a shelter from hawks, has its blossom week, and in course its harvest, sincere, though small.’ *T was thirty years ago, In a rocky pasture field Sprang an infant apple grove Unplanted and concealed. I sing the wild apple, theme enough for me. I love the racy fruit and I reverence the tree. In that small family there was one that loved the sun, which sent its root down deep and took fast hold on life, while the others went to sleep. In two years’ time ’t had thus Reached the level of the rocks, Admired the stretching world, Nor feared the wandering flocks. But at this tender age Its sufferings began: There came a browsing ox And cut it down a span.

P. M. — Down river in boat. Though it did not rain yesterday, as I remember, it was overcast all day, — did n’t clear up, — and this forenoon it has rained again. The sun only comes out once or twice for a moment this afternoon.‘ Accord- ingly, this being the seventh day of cloud and the fourth of rain (skipping yesterday), the river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yester- day) shooting musquash. I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus), driven out of the grass of the meadow by the flood. Its head is raised to the surface for air, and it appears sluggish and enfeebled by the water. Putting out my paddle, it immediately coils about it and is raised into the boat. It has a distinct pale-pink abdomen, slightly bluish forward. Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe run- ning down the middle of the back, on each side of which is a line of dark-brown spots about an eighth of an inch apart, as the two lines are also an eighth of an inch apart. This snake is about one foot long. I hold it in my hand, and it is quite inoffensive. — The sun comes out once or twice, the water is smooth, and the cocks crow as in spring. As I am picking cranberries below Flint’s Bridge, they being drifted against the shore together with much loose meadow wreck, I notice many crickets wrecked with them and half drowned, as well as snails’ shells. Spiders, however, are in their element. A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitermg and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. I meet Good- win and afterward Melvin. ‘They are musquash- shooting. The latter has killed nineteen to-day down- stream, thirty-one yesterday up the Assabet. He has also a coot, which he calls a little black dipper! It has some clear white under its tail. Is this, then, the name of that dipper? and are the young dippers of Moosehead different? ' The latter were in flocks and had some white in front, I have said. Melvin asked if I had seen “ Pink-eye,” meaning Goodwin. There is a large square-sided black rock, say five or six feet high, eight long, and five wide, on Mrs. Ripley’s shore, wedged close between two small elms, and your first thought on seeing it is that it has accord- ing to some law occupied that space between the trees, not reflecting that it is more ancient than the trees by a geological period, and that the latter have but re- cently sprung up under its protection. I thought the rock had been accurately fitted into that space. There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real; as if they were just, perchance, establishing, or else losing, a real basis in my world. This is especially the case in the early morning hours, when there is a gradual transition from dreams to waking thoughts, from illusions to actualities, as from darkness, or per- chance moon and star light, to sunlight. Dreams are real, as is the light of the stars and moon, and theirs is said to be a dreamy light. Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground be- tween dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind. At least, until we have for some time changed our position from pros- trate to erect, and commenced or faced some of the duties of the day, we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. This morning, for instance, for the twentieth time at least, I thought of that mountain in the easterly part of our town (where no high hill actually is) which once or twice I had ascended, and often allowed my thoughts . alone to climb. I now contemplate it in my mind as a familar thought which I have surely had for many years from time to time, but whether anything could have reminded me of it in the middle of yester- day, whether I ever before remembered it in broad daylight, I doubt. I can now eke out the vision I had of it this morning with my old and yesterday forgotten dreams. My way up used to lie through a dark and unfre- quented wood at its base, — I cannot now tell exactly, it was so long ago, under what circumstances I first ascended, only that I shuddered as I went along (I have an indistinct remembrance of having been out overnight alone), — and then I steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees, where wild beasts haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a moun- tain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What distinguishes that summit above the earthy line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know no path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sub- lime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire. This is a business we can partly understand. The perfect mountain height is already thoroughly puri- fied. It is as if you trod with awe the face of a god turned up, unwittingly but helplessly, yielding to the laws of gravity. And are there not such mountains, east or west, from which you may look down on Con- cord in your thought, and on all the world? In dreams I am shown this height from time to time, and I seem to have asked my fellow once to climb there with me, and yet I am constrained to believe that I never actu- ally ascended it. It chances, now I think of it,’ that ’ Now first think of tt, at this stage of my description, which makes it rises in my mind where lies the Burying-Hill. You might go through its gate to enter that dark wood,’ but that hill and its graves are so concealed and ob- literated by the awful mountain that I never thought of them as underlying it. Might not the graveyards of the just always be hills, ways by which we ascend and overlook the plain ? But my old way down was different, and, indeed, this was another way up, though I never so ascended. I came out, as I descended, breathing the thicker air. I came out the belt of wood into a familiar pasture, and along down by a wall. Often, as I go along the low side of this pasture, I let my thoughts ascend toward the mount, gradually entering the stinted wood (Nature subdued) and the thinner air, and drape them- selves with mists. There are ever two ways up: one is through the dark wood, the other through the sunny pasture. That is, I reach and discover the mountain only through the dark wood, but I see to my surprise, when I look off between the mists from its summit, how it is ever adjacent to my native fields, nay, immi- nent over them, and accessible through a sunny pas- ture. Why is it that in the lives of men we hear more of the dark wood than of the sunny pasture ? A hard-featured god reposing, whose breath hangs about his forehead. it the more singularly symbolical. The interlineations on the last page were made before this. [The interlineations referred to com- prise the words “only that I shuddered . . . overnight alone” in the last paragraph.] Though the pleasure of ascending the mountain is largely mixed with awe, my thoughts are purified and sublimed by it, as if I had been translated. I see that men may be well-mannered or convention- ally polite toward men, but skeptical toward God. Forever in my dream and in my morning thought, Eastward a mount ascends; But when in the sunbeam its hard outline is sought, It all dissolves and ends. The woods that way are gates; the pastures too slope =r To an unearthly ground; But when I ask my mates to take the staff and cup, It can no more be found. Perhaps I have no shoes fit for the lofty soil Where my thoughts graze, No properly spun clues, nor well-strained mid-day oil, Or must I mend my ways? It is a promised land which I have not yet earned. { have not made beginning With consecrated hand, nor have I ever learned To lay the underpinning. ‘The mountain sinks by day, as do my lofty thoughts, Because I’m not high-minded. If I could think alway above these hills and warts, I should see it, though blinded. It is a spiral path within the pilgrim’s soul Leads to this mountain’s brow; Commencing at his hearth he climbs up to this goal He knows not when nor how. We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth, or perhaps inheriting it or getting it by other accident, having recourse, for re- laxation after excessive toil or as a mere relief to their idle ennui, to artificial amusements, rarely elevating and often debasing. I think that men generally are mistaken with regard to amusements. Every one who deserves to be regarded as higher than the brute may be supposed to have an earnest purpose, to accomplish which is the object of his existence, and this is at once his work and his supremest pleasure; and for diver- sion and relaxation, for suggestion and education and strength, there is offered the never-failing amusement of getting a living, — never-failing, I mean, when tem- perately indulged in. I know of no such amusement, —so wholesome and in every sense profitable, — for instance, as to spend an hour or two in a day picking some berries or other fruits which will be food for the winter, or collecting driftwood from the river for fuel, or cultivating the few beans or potatoes which I want. Theatres and operas, which intoxicate for a season, are as nothing compared to these pursuits. And so it is with all the true arts of life. Farming and build- ing and manufacturing and sailing are the greatest and wholesomest amusements that were ever invented (for God invented them), and I suppose that the farmers and mechanics know it, only I think they indulge to excess generally, and so what was meant for a joy be- comes the sweat of the brow. Gambling, horse-racing, loafing, and rowdyism generally, after all tempt but few. The mass are tempted by those other amusements, of farming, etc. It is a great amusement, and more profitable than I could have invented, to go and spend an afternoon hour picking cranberries. By these vari- ous pursuits your experience becomes singularly com- plete and rounded. The novelty and significance of such pursuits are remarkable. Such is the path by which we climb to the heights of our being; and com- pare the poetry which such simple pursuits have in- spired with the unreadable volumes which have been written about art. Who is the most profitable companion? He who has been picking cranberries and chopping wood, or he who has been attending the opera all his days? I find when I have been building a fence or surveying a farm, or even collecting simples, that these were the true paths to perception and enjoyment. My being seems to have put forth new roots and to be more strongly planted. This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness. If, as a poet or naturalist, you wish to explore a given neighborhood, go and live in it, 2. e. get your living in it. Fish in its streams, hunt in its forests, gather fuel from its water, its woods, cultivate the ground, and pluck the wild fruits, etc., etc. This will be the surest and speediest way to those perceptions you covet. No amusement has worn better than farming. It tempts men just as strongly to-day as in the day of Cincinnatus. Healthily and properly pursued, it is not a whit more grave than huckleberrying, and if it takes any airs on itself as superior there’s something wrong about it. I have aspired to practice in succession all the honest arts of life, that I may gather all their fruits. But then, if you are intemperate, if you toil to raise an unneces- sary amount of corn, even the large crop of wheat be- comes as a small crop of chaff. If our living were once honestly got, then it would be time to invent other amusements. After reading Ruskin on the love of Nature, I think, “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” He there, to my surprise, expresses the common infidelity of his age and race. He has not implicitly surrendered himself to her. And what does he substitute for that Nature? I do not know, unless it be the Church of England. Questioning whether that relation to Nature was of so much value, after all! It is sour grapes! He does not speak to the condition of foxes that have more spring in their legs. The love of Nature and full- est perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day. P. M. — Near the island, in my boat, I scare up a bittern (Ardea mvnor), and afterward half a dozen ducks, probably summer ducks. Saw a large flock of blackbirds yesterday. | There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky. You see no mist within it, large as it is, nor even a star. I find thousands of ants now apparently gone into winter quarters in my stumps, large black ones, red in the middle, partly dormant even this warm weather, yet with white grubs or young. Some are winged... . The clintonia was perfectly at home there.’ Its leaves were just as handsomely formed and green and dis- posed commonly in triangles about its stem, and its berries were just as blue and glossy as if they grew by some botanist’s favorite walk in Concord. . . .

Cloudy still and, in the afternoon, rain, the ninth day. The sugar maple and elm leaves are fallen, but I still see many large oaks, especially scar- let ones, which have lost very few leaves. Some scar- let oaks are pretty bright yet. ‘The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods. River probably at its height, higher than before since spring. I see some of. those great chocolate-colored fungi already emptied. ‘They burst open and expand into a saucer, and the dust blows out, leaving a distinct spongy bottom or base, often more than an inch thick. Like sponge to the eye, but how unlike it in its repug- nance to water! Many small grubs, covered and dis- guised with the dust, are feeding on these fungi. What primitive and simple bread or manna these are! Out of a natural curiosity, the growth of the woods, we walked into the dark and musty log house there,’ trampling down the rank herd’s-grass three feet high which grew close up to the door, and the hunter fol- lowed us as if to see us put the house on as he had done. He behaved as if he were the latest comer, and was so absorbed in us that he did not appear to own the newly baked loaf of bread in a blackened Yankee baker on the counter by his side, and I thought at first it had lain over from another season. In the Lee farm swamp, by the old Sam Barrett mill site, I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (? ) and cristatum (?).?. They are also common in other swamps now. They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now. The atmos- phere of the house is less congenial to them. In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves. You are inclined to approach and raise each frond in succes- sion, moist, trembling, fragile greenness. They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under the bare ma- ples and grape-vines and witch-hazels, and about each trickling spring which is half choked with fallen leaves. What means this persistent vitality, invulner- able to frost and wet? Why were these spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken down? They stay as if to keep up the spirits of the cold-blooded frogs which have not yet gone into the mud; that the summer may die with decent and graceful moderation, gradually. Is not the water of the spring improved by their presence? ‘They fall back and droop here and there, like the plumes of departing summer, — of the departing year. Even in them I feel an argument for immortality. Death is so far from being universal. The same destroyer does not destroy all. How valu- able they are (with the lycopodiums) for cheerfulness. Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf, as in a hale old age. To my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and always some forest noble- ness seems to have its haunt under their umbrage. Each such green tuft of ferns is a grove where some nobility dwells and walks. All that was immortal in the swamp’s herbage seems here crowded into smaller compass, — the concentrated greenness of the swamp. How dear they must be to the chickadee and the rabbit! The cool, slowly retreating rear-guard of the swamp army. What virtue is theirs that enables them to resist the frost ? 3 If you are afflicted with melancholy at this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk- cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year. Their gravestones are not bespoken yet. Who shall be sexton to them? Is it the winter of their discontent ? Do they seem to have lain down to die, despairing of skunk-cabbagedom? “Up and at ’em,” “Give it to em,” “ Excelsior,” “ Put it through,” — these are their mottoes. Mortal human creatures must take a little respite in this fall of the year; their spirits do flag a little. There is a little questioning of destiny, and thinking to go like cowards to where the “weary shall be at rest.” But not so with the skunk-cabbage. Its withered leaves fall and are transfixed by a rising bud. Winter and death are ignored; the circle of life is complete. Are these false prophets? Is it a lie or a vain boast underneath the skunk-cabbage bud, pushing it upward and lifting the dead leaves with it? They rest with spears advanced; they rest to shoot! I say it is good for me to be here, slumping in the mud, a trap covered with withered leaves. See those green cabbage buds lifting the dry leaves in that watery and muddy place. There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see an- other summer ahead.

P. M.— To Fair Haven Pond over Cliffs. Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.