31 January 1859 – 6 February 1859

P. M. — Up river across Cyanean Meadow.

P. M.— Up Assabet. The river having suddenly gone down since the freshet, I see cakes of ice eight or ten feet across left two feet high or more above the banks, frozen to four or five maples or oaks. Indeed, each shore is lined with them, where wooded, a continuous row attached to alders, maples, swamp white oaks, etc., which grow through them or against their edges. They are some- what like tables of a picnic party or a muster-field dinner. Rustic tables and seats. Sometimes a little inclined, having settled on one side. Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores, and the rain and melted snow, running down, has drifted over the edge of it, forming abundant and pretty icicles, and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight. As for large oak leaves now, I think there is not much difference between the white and scarlet oaks; then come black, red, and swamp white, but the last one has scarcely any.

I see Peter Hutchinson cutting down a large red oak on A. Heywood’s hillside, west of the former’s house. He points out to me what he calls the “gray oak” there, with “a thicker bark” than the red. It is the scarlet oak.

Five minutes before 3 p. m., Father died.! After a sickness of some two years, going down-town in pleasant weather, doing a little business from time to time, hoeing a little in the garden, etc., Father took to his chamber January 13th, and did not come down again. Most of the time previously he had coughed and expectorated a great deal. Latterly he did not cough, but continued to raise. He continued to sit up in his chamber till within a week before he died. He sat up for a little while on the Sunday four days before he died. Generally he was very silent for many months. He was quite conscious to the last, and his death was so easy that we should not have been aware that he was dying, though we were sitting around his bed, if we had not watched very closely.? I have touched a body which was flexible and warm, yet tenantless,— warmed by what fire? When the spirit that animated some matter has left it, who else, what else, can animate it ? How enduring are our bodies, after all! The forms of our brothers and sisters, our parents and children and wives, lie still in the hills and fields round about us, not to mention those of our remoter ancestors, and the matter which composed the body of our first human father still exists under another name.

When we have experienced many disappoint- ments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did. [I see another butcher-bird on the top of a young tree by the pond.