7 December 1857 – 13 December 1857

Running the long northwest side of Richard- son’s Fair Haven lot. It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners on the middle of the line, amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very un- frequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them down for a dry and springy seat. As I sit there amid the sweet-fern, talking with my man Briney, I observe that the recent shoots of the sweet-fern — which, like many larger bushes and trees, have a few leaves in a tuft still at their extremities — toward the sun are densely covered with a bright, warm, silvery down, which looks like frost, so thick and white. Looking the other way, I see none of it, but the bare reddish twigs. Even this is a cheering and compensating discovery in my otherwise barren work. I get thus a few positive values, answering to the bread and cheese which make my dinner. I owe thus to my weeks at surveying a few such slight but positive discoveries. Briney, who has been in this country but few years, says he has lost three children here. His eldest boy fell on the deck in rough weather and struck his knee on the anchor-chain, and though he did not mind it then, his whole body ran out of the wound within two or three months. I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.

Staples says he came to Concord some twenty- four years ago a poor boy with a dollar and three cents in his pocket, and he spent the three cents for drink at Bigelow’s tavern, and now he’s worth “twenty hundred dollars clear.” He remembers many who in- herited wealth whom he can buy out to-day. I told him that he had done better than I in a pecuniary re- spect, for I had only earned my living. “ Well,” said he, “that’s all I’ve done, and I don’t know as I’ve got much better clothes than you.” I was particularly poorly clad then, in the woods; my hat, pants, boots, rubbers, and gloves would not have brought four- pence, and I told the Irishman that it was n’t every- body could afford to have a fringe round his legs, as I had, my corduroys not preserving a selvage.

P. M.— To Goose Pond. This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent. I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond. I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d), moving about in the same place under the ice, which I can- not crack with my feet. The Emerson children see six under the ice of Goose Pond to-day. Apparently many winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes. In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to be- lieve that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in Decem- ber, ’51. I find one white birch standing and two fallen. The latter were faced at one end, for the numbers, and at the other rotten and broken off as short, appar- ently, as if sawed, because the bark so tears. At first I did not know but they had been moved, but think- ing that if they had fallen where they stood I should find some hole or looseness in the ground at the rotten end, I felt for it and in each case found it; in one, also, the rotten point of the stake. Thus in six years two out of three stout (two-and-a-half-inch) birch stakes were flat. The hickory stake I set on R. W. E.’s town line in March, ’50, was flat this last summer, or seven years, but a white [sic] stake set in ’49-’50 on Moore and Hosmer’s lot was standing aslant this month. A surveyor should know what stakes last longest. I hear a characteristic anecdote respecting Mrs. Hoar, from good authority. Her son Edward, who takes his father’s place and attends to the same duties, asked his mother the other night, when about retiring, “Shall I put the cat down cellar?” “No,” said she, “you may put her outdoors.” The next night he asked, “Shall I put the cat outdoors?” “No,” answered she, “you may put her down cellar.” ‘The third night he asked, “Shall I put the cat down cellar or outdoors?” “Well,” said his mother, “you may open the cellar door and then open the front door, and let her go just which way she pleases.”” Edward suggested that it was a cold night for the cat to be outdoors, but his mother said, “Who knows but she has a little kitten somewhere to look after?” Mrs. H.is a peculiar woman, who has her own opinion and way, a strong-willed, managing woman.