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Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 2.

by Nathaniel Hawthorne · English · Gutenberg #8089 · 388,400 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 2.

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8089]
                Most recently updated: December 17, 2011

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger


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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger








PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS, VOLUME II

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



[EXTRACTS FROM HIS PRIVATE LETTERS.]


Brook Farm, Oak Hill, April 13th, 1841.--. . . . Here I am in a polar
Paradise!  I know not how to interpret this aspect of nature,--whether it
be of good or evil omen to our enterprise.  But I reflect that the
Plymouth pilgrims arrived in the midst of storm, and stepped ashore upon
mountain snowdrifts; and, nevertheless, they prospered, and became a
great people,--and doubtless it will be the same with us.  I laud my
stars, however, that you will not have your first impressions of
(perhaps) our future home from such a day as this. . . . Through faith,
I persist in believing that Spring and Summer will come in their due
season; but the unregenerated man shivers within me, and suggests a doubt
whether I may not have wandered within the precincts of the Arctic
Circle, and chosen my heritage among everlasting snows. . . . Provide
yourself with a good stock of furs, and, if you can obtain the skin of a
polar bear, you will find it a very suitable summer dress for this
region. . . .

I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, except that I went
to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon.  We have eight of our own;
and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to
Miss Margaret Fuller.  She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick
over the milk-pail. . . . I intend to convert myself into a milkmaid
this evening, but I pray Heaven that Mr. Ripley may be moved to assign me
the kindliest cow in the herd, otherwise I shall perform my duty with
fear and trembling. . . .

I like my brethren in affliction very well; and, could you see us sitting
round our table at meal-times, before the great kitchen fire, you would
call it a cheerful sight.  Mrs. B------ is a most comfortable woman to
behold.  She looks as if her ample person were stuffed full of
tenderness,--indeed, as if she were all one great, kind heart.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

April 14th, 10 A. M.--. . . . I did not milk the cows last night, because
Mr. Ripley was afraid to trust them to my hands, or me to their horns, I
know not which.  But this morning I have done wonders.  Before breakfast,
I went out to the barn and began to chop hay for the cattle, and with
such "righteous vehemence," as Mr. Ripley says, did I labor, that in the
space of ten minutes I broke the machine.  Then I brought wood and
replenished the fires; and finally went down to breakfast, and ate up a
huge mound of buckwheat cakes.  After breakfast, Mr. Ripley put a
four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand was
called a pitchfork; and he and Mr. Farley being armed with similar
weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure.
This office being concluded, and I having purified myself, I sit down to
finish this letter. . . .

Miss Fuller's cow hooks the other cows, and has made herself ruler of the
herd, and behaves in a very tyrannical manner. . . . I shall make an
excellent husbandman,--I feel the original Adam reviving within me.


April 16th.--. . . . Since I last wrote, there has been an addition to
our community of four gentlemen in sables, who promise to be among our
most useful and respectable members.  They arrived yesterday about noon.
Mr. Ripley had proposed to them to join us, no longer ago than that very
morning.  I had some conversation with them in the afternoon, and was
glad to hear them express much satisfaction with their new abode and all
the arrangements.  They do not appear to be very communicative, however,
--or perhaps it may be merely an external reserve, like my own, to shield
their delicacy.  Several of their prominent characteristics, as well as
their black attire, lead me to believe that they are members of the
clerical profession; but I have not yet ascertained from their own lips
what has been the nature of their past lives.  I trust to have much
pleasure in their society, and, sooner or later, that we shall all of us
derive great strength from our intercourse with them.  I cannot too
highly applaud the readiness with which these four gentlemen in black
have thrown aside all the fopperies and flummeries which have their
origin in a false state of society.  When I last saw them, they looked as
heroically regardless of the stains and soils incident to our profession
as I did when I emerged from the gold-mine. . . .

I have milked a cow!!! . . . . The herd has rebelled against the
usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer; and, whenever they are turned out of
the barn, she is compelled to take refuge under our protection.  So much
did she impede my labors by keeping close to me, that I found it
necessary to give her two or three gentle pats with a shovel; but still
she preferred to trust herself to my tender mercies, rather than venture
among the horns of the herd.  She is not an amiable cow; but she has a
very intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of character.
I doubt not that she will soon perceive the expediency of being on good
terms with the rest of the sisterhood.

I have not yet been twenty yards from our house and barn; but I begin to
perceive that this is a beautiful place.  The scenery is of a mild and
placid character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its
beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more, the longer we
live here.  There is a brook, so near the house that we shall be able to
hear its ripple in the summer evenings, . . . . but, for agricultural
purposes, it has been made to flow in a straight and rectangular fashion,
which does it infinite damage as a picturesque object. . . .

It was a moment or two before I could think whom you meant by Mr. Dismal
View.  Why, he is one of the best of the brotherhood, so far as
cheerfulness goes; for if he do not laugh himself, he makes the rest of
us laugh continually.  He is the quaintest and queerest personage you
ever saw,--full of dry jokes, the humor of which is so incorporated with
the strange twistifications of his physiognomy, that his sayings ought to
be written down, accompanied with illustrations by Cruikshank.  Then he
keeps quoting innumerable scraps of Latin, and makes classical allusions,
while we are turning over the goldmine; and the contrast between the
nature of his employment and the character of his thoughts is
irresistibly ludicrous.

I have written this epistle in the parlor, while Farmer Ripley, and
Farmer Farley, and Farmer Dismal View were talking about their
agricultural concerns.  So you will not wonder if it is not a classical
piece of composition, either in point of thought or expression.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

Mr. Ripley has bought four black pigs.


April 22d.--. . . . What an abominable hand do I scribble!  but I have
been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such
occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews.
It is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the
world; but, thank God, I am able to do my share of it,--and my ability
increases daily.  What a great, broad-shouldered, elephantine personage I
shall become by and by!

I milked two cows this morning, and would send you some of the milk, only
that it is mingled with that which was drawn forth by Mr. Dismal View and
the rest of the brethren.


April 28th.--. . . . I was caught by a cold during my visit to Boston.
It has not affected my whole frame, but took entire possession of my
head, as being the weakest and most vulnerable part.  Never did anybody
sneeze with such vehemence and frequency; and my poor brain has been in a
thick fog; or, rather, it seemed as if my head were stuffed with coarse
wool. . . . Sometimes I wanted to wrench it off, and give it a great
kick, like a football.

This annoyance has made me endure the bad weather with even less than
ordinary patience; and my faith was so far exhausted that, when they told
me yesterday that the sun was setting clear, I would not even turn my
eyes towards the west.  But this morning I am made all over anew, and
have no greater remnant of my cold than will serve as an excuse for doing
no work to-day.

The family has been dismal and dolorous throughout the storm.  The night
before last, William Allen was stung by a wasp on the eyelid; whereupon
the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude, so that, at
the breakfast-table, one half of him looked like a blind giant (the eye
being closed), and the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous
aspect that I was constrained to laugh out of sheer pity.  The same day,
a colony of wasps was discovered in my chamber, where they had remained
throughout the winter, and were now just bestirring themselves, doubtless
with the intention of stinging me from head to foot  A similar discovery
was made in Mr. Farley's room.  In short, we seem to have taken up our
abode in a wasps' nest.  Thus you see a rural life is not one of unbroken
quiet and serenity.

If the middle of the day prove warm and pleasant, I promise myself to
take a walk. . . . I have taken one walk with Mr. Farley; and I could
not have believed that there was such seclusion at so short a distance
from a great city.  Many spots seem hardly to have been visited for
ages,--not since John Eliot preached to the Indians here.  If we were to
travel a thousand miles, we could not escape the world more completely
than we can here.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

I read no newspapers, and hardly remember who is President, and feel as
if I had no more concern with what other people trouble themselves about
than if I dwelt in another planet.


May 1st.--. . . . Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how
seldom a fact is accurately stated; how, almost invariably, when a story
has passed through the mind of a third person, it becomes, so far as
regards the impression that it makes in further repetitions, little
better than a falsehood, and this, too, though the narrator be the
most truth-seeking person in existence.  How marvellous the tendency
is! . . .  Is truth a fantasy which we are to pursue forever and never
grasp?

          *     *     *     *     *     *

My cold has almost entirely departed.  Were it a sunny day, I should
consider myself quite fit for labor out of doors; but as the ground is so
damp, and the atmosphere so chill, and the sky so sullen, I intend to
keep myself on the sick-list this one day longer, more especially as I
wish to read Carlyle on Heroes.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

There has been but one flower found in this vicinity,--and that was an
anemone, a poor, pale, shivering little flower, that had crept under a
stone-wall for shelter.  Mr. Farley found it, while taking a walk with
me.

. . . . This is May-day!  Alas, what a difference between the ideal and
the real!


May 4th.--. . . . My cold no longer troubles me, and all the morning I
have been at work under the clear blue sky, on a hillside.  Sometimes it
almost seemed as if I were at work in the sky itself, though the material
in which I wrought was the ore from our gold-mine.  Nevertheless, there
is nothing so unseemly and disagreeable in this sort of toil as you could
think.  It defiles the hands, indeed, but not the soul.  This gold ore is
a pure and wholesome substance, else our mother Nature would not devour
it so readily, and derive so much nourishment from it, and return such a
rich abundance of good grain and roots in requital of it.

The farm is growing very beautiful now,--not that we yet see anything of
the peas and potatoes which we have planted; but the grass blushes green
on the slopes and hollows.  I wrote that word "blush" almost
unconsciously; so we will let it go as an inspired utterance.

When I go forth afield, . . . . I look beneath the stonewalls, where the
verdure is richest, in hopes that a little company of violets, or some
solitary bud, prophetic of the summer, may be there. . . . But not a
wildflower have I yet found.  One of the boys gathered some yellow
cowslips last Sunday; but I am well content not to have found them, for
they are not precisely what I should like to send to you, though they
deserve honor and praise, because they come to us when no others will.
We have our parlor here dressed in evergreen as at Christmas.  That
beautiful little flower-vase . . . . stands on Mr. Ripley's study-table,
at which I am now writing.  It contains some daffodils and some
willow-blossoms.  I brought it here rather than keep it in my chamber,
because I never sit there, and it gives me many pleasant emotions to look
round and be surprised--for it is often a surprise, though I well know
that it is there--by something connected with the idea [of a friend].

          *     *     *     *     *     *

I do not believe that I should be patient here if I were not engaged in a
righteous and heaven-blessed way of life.  When I was in the Custom-House
and then at Salem I was not half so patient. . . .

We had some tableaux last evening, the principal characters being
sustained by Mr. Farley and Miss Ellen Slade.  They went off very
well. . . .

I fear it is time for me--sod-compelling as I am--to take the field
again.


May 11th.--. . . . This morning I arose at milking-time in good trim for
work; and we have been employed partly in an Augean labor of clearing out
a wood-shed, and partly in carting loads of oak.  This afternoon I hope
to have something to do in the field, for these jobs about the house are
not at all to my taste.


June 1st.--. . . . I have been too busy to write a long letter by this
opportunity, for I think this present life of mine gives me an antipathy
to pen and ink, even more than my Custom-House experience did. . . .
In the midst of toil, or after a hard day's work in the goldmine, my
soul obstinately refuses to be poured out on paper.  That abominable
gold-mine!  Thank God, we anticipate getting rid of its treasures in the
course of two or three days!  Of all hateful places that is the worst,
and I shall never comfort myself for having spent so many days of blessed
sunshine there.  It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and
perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow of the field, just as well as
under a pile of money.

Mr. George Bradford will probably be here to-day, so that there will be
no danger of my being under the necessity of laboring more than I like
hereafter.  Meantime my health is perfect, and my spirits buoyant, even
in the gold-mine.


August 12th.--. . . . I am very well, and not at all weary, for
yesterday's rain gave us a holiday; and, moreover, the labors of the farm
are not so pressing as they have been.  And, joyful thought! in a little
more than a fortnight; I shall be free from my bondage,--. . . . free to
enjoy Nature,--free to think and feel! . . . . Even my Custom-House
experience was not such a thraldom and weariness; my mind and heart were
free.  O, labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it
without becoming proportionably brutified!  Is it a praiseworthy matter
that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and
horses?  It is not so.


August 18th.--I am very well, only somewhat tired with walking half a
dozen miles immediately after breakfast, and raking hay ever since.  We
shall quite finish haying this week, and then there will be no more very
hard or constant labor during the one other week that I shall remain a
slave.


August 22d.--. . . . I had an indispensable engagement in the bean-field,
whither, indeed, I was glad to betake myself, in order to escape a
parting scene with ------.  He was quite out of his wits the night
before, and I sat up with him till long past midnight.  The farm is
pleasanter now that he is gone; for his unappeasable wretchedness threw a
gloom over everything.  Since I last wrote, we have done haying, and the
remainder of my bondage will probably be light.  It will be a long time,
however, before I shall know how to make a good use of leisure, either as
regards enjoyment or literary occupation. . . .

It is extremely doubtful whether Mr. Ripley will succeed in locating his
community on this farm.  He can bring Mr. E------ to no terms, and the
more they talk about the matter, the further they appear to be from a
settlement.  We must form other plans for ourselves; for I can see few or
no signs that Providence purposes to give us a home here.  I am weary,
weary, thrice weary, of waiting so many ages.  Whatever may be my gifts,
I have not hitherto shown a single one that may avail to gather gold.  I
confess that I have strong hopes of good from this arrangement with
M------; but when I look at the scanty avails of my past literary
efforts, I do not feel authorized to expect much from the future.  Well,
we shall see.  Other persons have bought large estates and built splendid
mansions with such little books as I mean to write; so that perhaps it is
not unreasonable to hope that mine may enable me to build a little
cottage, or, at least, to buy or hire one.  But I am becoming more and
more convinced that we must not lean upon this community.  Whatever is to
be done must be done by my own undivided strength.  I shall not remain
here through the winter, unless with an absolute certainty that there
will be a house ready for us in the spring.  Otherwise, I shall return to
Boston;--still, however, considering myself an associate of the
community, so that we may take advantage of any more favorable aspect of
affairs.  How much depends on these little books!  Methinks if anything
could draw out my whole strength, it would be the motives that now press
upon me.  Yet, after all, I must keep these considerations out of my
mind, because an external pressure always disturbs instead of assisting
me.


Salem, September 3d.--. . . . But really I should judge it to be twenty
years since I left Brook Farm; and I take this to be one proof that my
life there was an unnatural and unsuitable, and therefore an unreal one.
It already looks like a dream behind me.  The real Me was never an
associate of the community; there has been a spectral Appearance there,
sounding the horn at daybreak, and milking the cows, and hoeing potatoes,
and raking hay, toiling in the sun, and doing me the honor to assume my
name.  But this spectre was not myself.  Nevertheless, it is somewhat
remarkable that my hands have, during the past summer, grown very brown
and rough, insomuch that many people persist in believing that I, after
all, was the aforesaid spectral horn-sounder, cow-milker, potato-hoer,
and hay-raker.  But such people do not know a reality from a shadow.
Enough of nonsense.  I know not exactly how soon I shall return to the
farm.  Perhaps not sooner than a fortnight, from to-morrow.


Salem, September 14th.--. . . . Master Cheever is a very good subject for
a sketch, especially if he be portrayed in the very act of executing
judgment on an evildoer.  The little urchin may be laid across his knee,
and his arms and legs, and whole person indeed, should be flying all
abroad, in an agony of nervous excitement and corporeal smart.  The
Master, on the other hand, must be calm, rigid, without anger or pity,
the very personification of that immitigable law whereby suffering
follows sin.  Meantime the lion's head should have a sort of sly twist on
one side of its mouth, and a wink of one eye, in order to give the
impression that, after all, the crime and the punishment are neither of
them the most serious things in the world.  I could draw the sketch
myself, if I had but the use of ------'s magic fingers.

Then the Acadians will do very well for the second sketch.  They might be
represented as just landing on the wharf; or as presenting themselves
before Governor Shirley, seated in the great chair.  Another subject
might be old Cotton Mather, venerable in a three-cornered hat and other
antique attire, walking the streets of Boston, and lifting up his hands
to bless the people, while they all revile him.  An old dame should be
seen, flinging water, or emptying some vials of medicine on his head from
the latticed window of an old-fashioned house; and all around must be
tokens of pestilence and mourning,--as a coffin borne along,--a woman or
children weeping on a doorstep.  Can the tolling of the Old South bell be
painted?

If not this, then the military council, holden at Boston by the Earl of
Loudon and other captains and governors, might be taken, his lordship in
the great chair, an old-fashioned, military figure, with a star on his
breast.  Some of Louis XV.'s commanders will give the costume.  On the
table, and scattered about the room, must be symbols of warfare,--swords,
pistols, plumed hats, a drum, trumpet, and rolled-up banner in one leap.
It were not amiss to introduce the armed figure of an Indian chief, as
taking part in the council,--or standing apart from the English, erect
and stern.

Now for Liberty Tree.  There is an engraving of that famous vegetable in
Snow's History of Boston.  If represented, I see not what scene can be
beneath it, save poor Mr. Oliver, taking the oath.  He must have on a
bag-wig, ruffled sleeves, embroidered coat, and all such ornaments,
because he is the representative of aristocracy and an artificial system.
The people may be as rough and wild as the fancy can make them;
nevertheless, there must be one or two grave, puritanical figures in the
midst.  Such an one might sit in the great chair, and be an emblem of
that stern, considerate spirit which brought about the Revolution.  But
this would be a hard subject.

But what a dolt am I to obtrude my counsel. . . .


September 16th.--. . . . I do not very well recollect Monsieur du Miroir,
but, as to Mrs. Bullfrog, I give her up to the severest reprehension.
The story was written as a mere experiment in that style; it did not come
from any depth within me,--neither my heart nor mind had anything to do
with it.  I recollect that the Man of Adamant seemed a fine idea to nee
when I looked at it prophetically; but I failed in giving shape and
substance to the vision which I saw.  I don't think it can be very
good. . . .

I cannot believe all these stories about ------, because such a rascal
never could be sustained and countenanced by respectable men.  I take him
to be neither better nor worse than the average of his tribe.  However, I
intend to have all my copyrights taken out in my own name; and, if he
cheat me once, I will have nothing more to do with him, but will
straightway be cheated by some other publisher,--that being, of course,
the only alternative.

Governor Shirley's young French wife might be the subject of one of the
cuts.  She should sit in the great chair,--perhaps with a dressing-glass
before her,--and arrayed in all manner of fantastic finery, and with an
outre French air, while the old Governor is leaning fondly over her, and
a puritanic councillor or two are manifesting their disgust in the
background.  A negro footman and a French waiting-maid might be in
attendance.

In Liberty Tree might be a vignette, representing the chair in a very
shattered, battered, and forlorn condition, after it had been ejected
from Hutchinson's house.  This would serve to impress the reader with the
woful vicissitudes of sublunary things. . . .

Did you ever behold such a vile scribble as I write since I became a
farmer?  My chirography always was abominable, but now it is outrageous.


Brook Farm, September 22d, 1841.--. . . . Here I am again, slowly
adapting myself to the life of this queer community, whence I seem to
have been absent half a lifetime, so utterly have I grown apart from the
spirit, and manners of the place. . . . I was most kindly received; and
the fields and woods looked very pleasant in the bright sunshine of the
day before yesterday.  I have a friendlier disposition towards the farm,
now that I am no longer obliged to toil in its stubborn furrows.
Yesterday and to-day, however, the weather has been intolerable,--cold,
chill, sullen, so that it is impossible to be on kindly terms with Mother
Nature. . . .

I doubt whether I shall succeed in writing another volume of
Grandfather's Library while I remain here.  I have not the sense of
perfect seclusion which has always been essential to my power of
producing anything.  It is true, nobody intrudes into my room; but still
I cannot be quiet.  Nothing here is settled; everything is but beginning
to arrange itself, and though I would seem to have little to do with
aught beside my own thoughts, still I cannot but partake of the ferment
around me.  My mind will not be abstracted.  I must observe, and think,
and feel, and content myself with catching glimpses of things which may
be wrought out hereafter.  Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find
myself unable to set seriously about literary occupation for the present.
It will be good to have a longer interval between my labor of the body
and that of the mind.  I shall work to the better purpose after the
beginning of November.  Meantime I shall see these people and their
enterprise under a new point of view, and perhaps be able to determine
whether we have any call to cast in our lot among them.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

I do wish the weather would put off this sulky mood.  Had it not been for
the warmth and brightness of Monday, when I arrived here, I should have
supposed that all sunshine had left Brook Farm forever.  I have no
disposition to take long walks in such a state of the sky; nor have I any
buoyancy of spirit.  I am a very dull person just at this time.


September 25th.--. . . . One thing is certain.  I cannot and will not
spend the winter here.  The time would be absolutely thrown away so far
as regards any literary labor to be performed. . . .

The intrusion of an outward necessity into labors of the imagination and
intellect is, to me, very painful. . . .

I had rather a pleasant walk to a distant meadow a day or two ago, and we
found white and purple grapes in great abundance, ripe, and gushing with
rich, pure juice when the hand pressed the clusters.  Did you know what
treasures of wild grapes there are in this land?  If we dwell here, we
will make our own wine. . . .


September 27th.--. . . . Now, as to the affair with ------, I fully
confide in your opinion that he intends to make an unequal bargain with
poor, simple, innocent me,--never having doubted this myself.  But how is
he to accomplish it?  I am not, nor shall be, the least in his power,
whereas he is, to a certain extent, in mine.  He might announce his
projected Library, with me for the editor, in all the newspapers in the
universe; but still I could not be bound to become the editor, unless by
my own act; nor should I have the slightest scruple in refusing to be so,
at the last moment, if he persisted in treating me with injustice.  Then,
as for his printing Grandfather's Chair, I have the copyright in my own
hands, and could and would prevent the sale, or make him account to me
for the profits, in case of need.  Meantime he is making arrangements for
publishing the Library, contracting with other booksellers, and with
printers and engravers, and, with every step, making it more difficult
for himself to draw back.  I, on the other hand, do nothing which I
should not do if the affair with ------ were at an end; for, if I write a
book, it will be just as available for some other publisher as for him.
Instead of getting me into his power by this delay, he has trusted to my
ignorance and simplicity, and has put himself in my power.

He is not insensible of this.  At our last interview, he himself
introduced the subject of the bargain, and appeared desirous to close it.
But I was not prepared,--among other reasons, because I do not yet see
what materials I shall have for the republications in the Library; the
works that he has shown me being ill adapted for that purpose; and I wish
first to see some French and German books which he has sent for to New
York.  And, before concluding the bargain, I have promised George Hillard
to consult him, and let him do the business.  Is not this consummate
discretion? and am I not perfectly safe? . . . . I look at the matter
with perfect composure, and see all round my own position, and know that
it is impregnable.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

I was elected to two high offices last night,--viz. to be a trustee of
the Brook Farm estate, and Chairman of the Committee of Finance! . . . .
From the nature of my office, I shall have the chief direction of all the
money affairs of the community, the making of bargains, the supervision
of receipts and expenditures, etc., etc., etc. . . .

My accession to these august offices does not at all decide the question
of my remaining here permanently.  I told Mr. Ripley that I could not
spend the winter at the farm, and that it was quite uncertain whether I
returned in the spring. . . .

Take no part, I beseech you, in these magnetic miracles.  I am unwilling
that a power should be exercised on you of which we know neither the
origin nor consequence, and the phenomena of which seem rather calculated
to bewilder us than to teach us any truths about the present or future
state of being. . . . Supposing that the power arises from the
transfusion of one spirit into another, it seems to me that the
sacredness of an individual is violated by it; there would be an intruder
into the holy of holies. . . . I have no faith whatever, that people
are raised to the seventh heaven, or to any heaven at all, or that they
gain any insight into the mysteries of life beyond death by means of this
strange science.  Without distrusting that the phenomena have really
occurred, I think that they are to be accounted for as the result of a
material and physical, not of a spiritual, influence.  Opium has produced
many a brighter vision of heaven, I fancy, and just as susceptible of
proof as these.  They are dreams. . . . And what delusion can be more
lamentable and mischievous, than to mistake the physical and material for
the spiritual? what so miserable as to lose the soul's true, though
hidden knowledge and consciousness of heaven in the mist of an earth-born
vision?  If we would know what heaven is before we come thither, let us
retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we shall find it there
among holy thoughts and feelings; but let us not degrade high heaven
and its inhabitants into any such symbols and forms as Miss L------
describes; do not let an earthly effluence from Mrs. P------'s corporeal
system bewilder and perhaps contaminate something spiritual and sacred.
I should as soon think of seeking revelations of the future state in the
rottenness of the grave,--where so many do seek it. . . .

The view which I take of this matter is caused by no want of faith in
mysteries; but from a deep reverence of the soul, and of the mysteries
which it knows within itself, but never transmits to the earthly eye and
ear.  Keep the imagination sane,--that is one of the truest conditions of
communion with heaven.


Brook Farm, September 26th.--A walk this morning along the Needham road.
A clear, breezy morning, after nearly a week of cloudy and showery
weather.  The grass is much more fresh and vivid than it was last month,
and trees still retain much of their verdure, though here and there is a
shrub or a bough arrayed in scarlet and gold.  Along the road, in the
midst of a beaten track, I saw mushrooms or toadstools which had sprung
up probably during the night.

The houses in this vicinity are, many of them, quite antique, with long,
sloping roots, commencing at a few feet from the ground, and ending in a
lofty peak.  Some of them have huge old elms overshadowing the yard.  One
may see the family sleigh near the door, it having stood there all
through the summer sunshine, and perhaps with weeds sprouting through the
crevices of its bottom, the growth of the months since snow departed.
Old barns, patched and supported by timbers leaning against the sides,
and stained with the excrement of past ages.

In the forenoon I walked along the edge of the meadow towards Cow Island.
Large trees, almost a wood, principally of pine with the green
pasture-glades intermixed, and cattle feeding.  They cease grazing when
an intruder appears, and look at him with long and wary observation, then
bend their heads to the pasture again.  Where the firm ground of the
pasture ceases, the meadow begins, loose, spongy, yielding to the tread,
sometimes permitting the foot to sink into black mud, or perhaps over
ankles in water.  Cattle-paths, somewhat firmer than the general surface,
traverse the dense shrubbery which has overgrown the meadow.  This
shrubbery consists of small birch, elders, maples, and other trees, with
here and there white-pines of larger growth.  The whole is tangled and
wild and thick-set, so that it is necessary to part the nestling stems
and branches, and go crashing through.  There are creeping plants of
various sorts which clamber up the trees; and some of them have changed
color in the slight frosts which already have befallen these low grounds,
so that one sees a spiral wreath of scarlet leaves twining up to the top
of a green tree, intermingling its bright hues with their verdure, as if
all were of one piece.  Sometimes, instead of scarlet, the spiral wreath
is of a golden yellow.

Within the verge of the meadow, mostly near the firm shore of pasture
ground, I found several grapevines, hung with an abundance of large
purple grapes.  The vines had caught hold of maples and alders, and
climbed to the summit, curling round about and interwreathing their
twisted folds in so intimate a manner that it was not easy to tell the
parasite from the supporting tree or shrub.  Sometimes the same vine had
enveloped several shrubs, and caused a strange, tangled confusion,
converting all these poor plants to the purpose of its own support, and
hindering their growing to their own benefit and convenience.  The broad
vine-leaves, some of them yellow or yellowish-tinged, were seen
apparently growing on the same stems with the silver-mapled leaves, and
those of the other shrubs, thus married against their will by the
conjugal twine; and the purple clusters of grapes hung down from above
and in the midst so that one might "gather grapes," if not "of thorns,"
yet of as alien bushes.

One vine had ascended almost to the tip of a large white-pine, spreading
its leaves and hanging its purple clusters among all its boughs,--still
climbing and clambering, as if it would not be content till it had
crowned the very summit with a wreath of its own foliage and bunches of
grapes.  I mounted high into the tree, and ate the fruit there, while the
vine wreathed still higher into the depths above my head.  The grapes
were sour, being not yet fully ripe.  Some of them, however, were sweet
and pleasant.


September 27th.--A ride to Brighton yesterday morning, it being the day
of the weekly cattle-fair.  William Allen and myself went in a wagon,
carrying a calf to be sold at the fair.  The calf had not had his
breakfast, as his mother had preceded him to Brighton, and he kept
expressing his hunger and discomfort by loud, sonorous baas, especially
when we passed any cattle in the fields or in the road.  The cows,
grazing within hearing, expressed great interest, and some of them came
galloping to the roadside to behold the calf.  Little children, also, on
their way to school, stopped to laugh and point at poor little Bessie.
He was a prettily behaved urchin, and kept thrusting his hairy muzzle
between William and myself, apparently wishing to be stroked and patted.
It was an ugly thought that his confidence in human nature, and nature in
general, was to be so ill rewarded as by cutting his throat, and selling
him in quarters.  This, I suppose, has been his fate before now!

It was a beautiful morning, clear as crystal, with an invigorating, but
not disagreeable coolness.  The general aspect of the country was as
green as summer,--greener indeed than mid or latter summer,--and there
were occasional interminglings of the brilliant hues of autumn, which
made the scenery more beautiful, both visibly and in sentiment.  We saw
no absolutely mean nor poor-looking abodes along the road.  There were
warm and comfortable farm-houses, ancient, with the porch, the sloping
roof, the antique peak, the clustered chimney, of old times; and modern
cottages, smart and tasteful; and villas, with terraces before them, and
dense shade, and wooden urns on pillars, and other such tokens of
gentility.  Pleasant groves of oak and walnut, also, there were,
sometimes stretching along valleys, sometimes ascending a hill and
clothing it all round, so as to make it a great clump of verdure.
Frequently we passed people with cows, oxen, sheep, or pigs for Brighton
Fair.

On arriving at Brighton, we found the village thronged with people,
horses, and vehicles.  Probably there is no place in New England where
the character of an agricultural population may be so well studied.
Almost all the farmers within a reasonable distance make it a point, I
suppose, to attend Brighton Fair pretty frequently, if not on business,
yet as amateurs.  Then there are all the cattle-people and butchers who
supply the Boston market, and dealers from far and near; and every man
who has a cow or a yoke of oxen, whether to sell or buy, goes to Brighton
on Monday.  There were a thousand or two of cattle in the extensive pens
belonging to the tavern-keeper, besides many that were standing about.
One could hardly stir a step without running upon the horns of one
dilemma or another, in the shape of ox, cow, bull, or ram.  The yeomen
appeared to be more in their element than I have ever seen them anywhere
else, except, indeed, at labor,--more so than at musterings and such
gatherings of amusement.  And yet this was a sort of festal day, as well
as a day of business.  Most of the people were of a bulky make, with much
bone and muscle, and some good store of fat, as if they had lived on
flesh-diet; with mottled faces, too, hard and red, like those of persons
who adhered to the old fashion of spirit-drinking.  Great, round-paunched
country squires were there too, sitting under the porch of the tavern, or
waddling about, whip in hand, discussing the points of the cattle.  There
were also gentlemen-farmers, neatly, trimly, and fashionably dressed, in
handsome surtouts, and trousers strapped under their boots.  Yeomen, too,
in their black or blue Sunday suits, cut by country tailors, and
awkwardly worn.  Others (like myself) had on the blue stuff frocks which
they wear in the fields, the most comfortable garments that ever were
invented.  Country loafers were among the throng,--men who looked
wistfully at the liquors in the bar, and waited for some friend to invite
them to drink,--poor, shabby, out-at-elbowed devils.  Also, dandies from
the city, corseted and buckramed, who had come to see the humors of
Brighton Fair.  All these, and other varieties of mankind, either
thronged the spacious bar-room of the hotel, drinking, smoking, talking,
bargaining, or walked about among the cattle-pens, looking with knowing
eyes at the horned people.  The owners of the cattle stood near at hand,
waiting for offers.  There was something indescribable in their aspect,
that showed them to be the owners, though they mixed among the crowd.
The cattle, brought from a hundred separate farms, or rather from a
thousand, seemed to agree very well together, not quarrelling in the
least.  They almost all had a history, no doubt, if they could but have
told it.  The cows had each given her milk to support families,--had
roamed the pastures, and come home to the barn-yard, had been looked upon
as a sort of member of the domestic circle, and was known by a name, as
Brindle or Cherry.  The oxen, with their necks bent by the heavy yoke,
had toiled in the plough-field and in haying-time for many years, and
knew their master's stall as well as the master himself knew his own
table.  Even the young steers and the little calves had something of
domestic sacredness about them; for children had watched their growth,
and petted them, and played with them.  And here they all were, old and
young, gathered from their thousand homes to Brighton Fair; whence the
great chance was that they would go to the slaughter-house, and thence be
transmitted, in sirloins, joints, and such pieces, to the tables of the
Boston folk.

William Allen had come to buy four little pigs to take the places of four
who have now grown large at our farm, and are to be fatted and killed
within a few weeks.  There were several hundreds, in pens appropriated to
their use, grunting discordantly, and apparently in no very good humor
with their companions or the world at large.  Most or many of these pigs
had been imported from the State of New York.  The drovers set out with a
large number, and peddle them along the road till they arrive at Brighton
with the remainder.  William selected four, and bought them at five cents
per pound.  These poor little porkers were forthwith seized by the tails,
their legs tied, and they thrown into our wagon, where they kept up a
continual grunt and squeal till we got home.  Two of them were yellowish,
or light gold-color, the other two were black and white speckled; and all
four of very piggish aspect and deportment.  One of them snapped at
William's finger most spitefully, and bit it to the bone.

All the scene of the Fair was very characteristic and peculiar,--cheerful
and lively, too, in the bright, warm sun.  I must see it again; for it
ought to be studied.


September 28th.--A picnic party in the woods, yesterday, in honor of
little Frank Dana's birthday, he being six years old.  I strolled out,
after dinner, with Mr. Bradford, and in a lonesome glade we met the
apparition of an Indian chief, dressed in appropriate costume of blanket,
feathers, and paint, and armed with a musket.  Almost at the same time, a
young gypsy fortune-teller came from among the trees, and proposed to
tell my fortune.  While she was doing this, the goddess Diana let fly an
arrow, and hit me smartly in the hand.  The fortune-teller and goddess
were in fine contrast, Diana being a blonde, fair, quiet, with a moderate
composure; and the gypsy (O. G.) a bright, vivacious, dark-haired,
rich-complexioned damsel,--both of them very pretty, at least pretty
enough to make fifteen years enchanting.  Accompanied by these denizens
of the wild wood, we went onward, and came to a company of fantastic
figures, arranged in a ring for a dance or a game.  There was a Swiss
girl, an Indian squaw, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or two
foresters, and several people in Christian attire, besides children of
all ages.  Then followed childish games, in which the grown people took
part with mirth enough,--while I, whose nature it is to be a mere
spectator both of sport and serious business, lay under the trees and
looked on.  Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson and Miss Fuller, who arrived an hour
or two before, came forth into the little glade where we were assembled.
Here followed much talk.  The ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold
collation of cakes and fruit.  All was pleasant enough,--an excellent
piece of work,--"would 't were done!"  It has left a fantastic impression
on my memory, this intermingling of wild and fabulous characters with
real and homely ones, in the secluded nook of the woods.  I remember
them, with the sunlight breaking through overshadowing branches, and they
appearing and disappearing confusedly,--perhaps starting out of the
earth; as if the every-day laws of nature were suspended for this
particular occasion.  There were the children, too, laughing and sporting
about, as if they were at home among such strange shapes,--and anon
bursting into loud uproar of lamentation, when the rude gambols of the
merry archers chanced to overturn them.  And apart, with a shrewd, Yankee
observation of the scene, stands our friend Orange, a thick-set, sturdy
figure, enjoying the fun well enough, yet rather laughing with a
perception of its nonsensicalness than at all entering into the spirit of
the thing.

This morning I have been helping to gather apples.  The principal farm
labors at this time are ploughing for winter rye, and breaking up the
greensward for next year's crop of potatoes, gathering squashes, and not
much else, except such year-round employments as milking.  The crop of
rye, to be sure, is in process of being thrashed, at odd intervals.

I ought to have mentioned among the diverse and incongruous growths of
the picnic party our two Spanish boys from Manilla;--Lucas, with his
heavy features and almost mulatto complexion; and Jose, slighter, with
rather a feminine face,--not a gay, girlish one, but grave, reserved,
eying you sometimes with an earnest but secret expression, and causing
you to question what sort of person he is.


Friday, October 1st.--I have been looking at our four swine,--not of the
last lot, but those in process of fattening.  They lie among the clean
rye straw in the sty, nestling close together; for they seem to be beasts
sensitive to the cold, and this is a clear, bright, crystal morning, with
a cool northwest-wind.  So there lie these four black swine, as deep
among the straw as they can burrow, the very symbols of slothful ease and
sensuous comfort.  They seem to be actually oppressed and overburdened
with comfort.  They are quick to notice any one's approach, and utter a
low grunt thereupon,--not drawing a breath for that particular purpose,
but grunting with their ordinary breath,--at the same time turning an
observant, though dull and sluggish eye upon the visitor.  They seem to
be involved and buried in their own corporeal substance, and to look
dimly forth at the outer world.  They breathe not easily, and yet not
with difficulty nor discomfort; for the very unreadiness and oppression
with which their breath cones appears to make them sensible of the deep
sensual satisfaction which they feel.  Swill, the remnant of their last
meal, remains in the trough, denoting that their food is more abundant
than even a hog can demand.  Anon they fall asleep, drawing short and
heavy breaths, which heave their huge sides up and down; but at the
slightest noise they sluggishly unclose their eyes, and give another
gentle grunt.  They also grunt among themselves, without any external
cause; but merely to express their swinish sympathy.  I suppose it is the
knowledge that these four grunters are doomed to die within two or three
weeks that gives them a sort of awfulness in my conception.  It makes me
contrast their present gross substance of fleshly life with the
nothingness speedily to come.  Meantime the four newly bought pigs are
running about the cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd, investigating
everything, as their nature is.  When I throw an apple among them, they
scramble with one another for the prize, and the successful one scampers
away to eat it at leisure.  They thrust their snouts into the mud, and
pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish.  Nothing within their sphere do
they leave unexamined, grunting all the time with infinite variety of
expression.  Their language is the most copious of that of any quadruped,
and, indeed, there is something deeply and indefinably interesting in the
swinish race.  They appear the more a mystery the longer one gazes at
them.  It seems as if there were an important meaning to them, if one
could but find it out.  One interesting trait in them is their perfect
independence of character.  They care not for man, and will not adapt
themselves to his notions, as other beasts do; but are true to
themselves, and act out their hoggish nature.


October 7th.--Since Saturday last (it being now Thursday), I have been in
Boston and Salem, and there has been a violent storm and rain during the
whole time.  This morning shone as bright as if it meant to make up for
all the dismalness of the past days.  Our brook, which in the summer was
no longer a running stream, but stood in pools along its pebbly course,
is now full from one grassy verge to the other, and hurries along with a
murmuring rush.  It will continue to swell, I suppose, and in the winter
and spring it will flood all the broad meadows through which it flows.

I have taken a long walk this forenoon along the Needham road, and across
the bridge, thence pursuing a cross-road through the woods, parallel with
the river, which I crossed again at Dedham.  Most of the road lay through
a growth of young oaks principally.  They still retain their verdure,
though, looking closely in among them, one perceives the broken sunshine
falling on a few sere or bright-hued tufts of shrubbery.  In low, marshy
spots, on the verge of the meadows or along the river-side, there is a
much more marked autumnal change.  Whole ranges of bushes are there
painted with many variegated lines, not of the brightest tint, but of a
sober cheerfulness.  I suppose this is owing more to the late rains than
to the frost; for a heavy rain changes the foliage somewhat at this
season.  The first marked frost was seen last Saturday morning.  Soon
after sunrise it lay, white as snow, over all the grass, and on the tops
of the fences, and in the yard, on the heap of firewood.  On Sunday, I
think, there was a fall of snow, which, however, did not lie on the
ground a moment.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the
side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and
friendly with the sunshine.  It seems to be of a kindly and homely
nature.  And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks
the more green and beautiful for them.  In summer or spring, Nature is
farther from one's sympathies.


October 8th.--Another gloomy day, lowering with portents of rain close at
hand.  I have walked up into the pastures this morning, and looked about
me a little.  The woods present a very diversified appearance just now,
with perhaps more varieties of tint than they are destined to wear at a
somewhat later period.  There are some strong yellow hues, and some deep
red; there are innumerable shades of green, some few having the depth of
summer; others, partially changed towards yellow, look freshly verdant
with the delicate tinge of early summer or of May.  Then there is the
solemn and dark green of the pines.  The effect is, that every tree in
the wood and every bush among the shrubbery has a separate existence,
since, confusedly intermingled, each wears its peculiar color, instead of
being lost in the universal emerald of summer.  And yet there is a
oneness of effect likewise, when we choose to look at a whole sweep of
woodland instead of analyzing its component trees.  Scattered over the
pasture, which the late rains have kept tolerably green, there are spots
or islands of dusky red,--a deep, substantial line, very well fit to be
close to the ground,--while the yellow, and light, fantastic shades of
green soar upward to the sky.  These red spots are the blueberry and
whortleberry bushes.  The sweetfern is changed mostly to russet, but
still retains its wild and delightful fragrance when pressed in the hand.
Wild China-asters are scattered about, but beginning to wither.  A little
while ago, mushrooms or toadstools were very numerous along the
wood-paths and by the roadsides, especially after rain.  Some were of
spotless white, some yellow, and some scarlet.  They are always mysteries
and objects of interest to me, springing as they do so suddenly from no
root or seed, and growing one wonders why.  I think, too, that some
varieties are pretty objects, little fairy tables, centre-tables,
standing on one leg.  But their growth appears to be checked now, and
they are of a brown tint and decayed.

The farm business to-day is to dig potatoes.  I worked a little at it.
The process is to grasp all the stems of a hill and pull them up.  A
great many of the potatoes are thus pulled, clinging to the stems and to
one another in curious shapes,--long red things, and little round ones,
imbedded in the earth which clings to the roots.  These being plucked
off, the rest of the potatoes are dug out of the hill with a hoe, the
tops being flung into a heap for the cow-yard.  On my way home, I paused
to inspect the squash-field.  Some of the squashes lay in heaps as they
were gathered, presenting much variety of shape and hue,--as golden
yellow, like great lumps of gold, dark green, striped and variegated; and
some were round, and some lay curling their long necks, nestling, as it
were, and seeming as if they had life.

In my walk yesterday forenoon I passed an old house which seemed
to be quite deserted.  It was a two-story, wooden house, dark and
weather-beaten.  The front windows, some of them, were shattered and
open, and others were boarded up.  Trees and shrubbery were growing
neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part.  There was an aged
barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up.
There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel.  Everything was
in keeping.  At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in
such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a
decrepit and infirm old man at the angle of the house, its fit occupant.
The grass, however, was very green and beautiful around this dwelling,
and, the sunshine falling brightly on it, the whole effect was cheerful
and pleasant.  It seemed as if the world was so glad that this desolate
old place, where there was never to be any more hope and happiness, could
not at all lessen the general effect of joy.

I found a small turtle by the roadside, where he had crept to warm
himself in the genial sunshine.  He had a sable back, and underneath his
shell was yellow, and at the edges bright scarlet.  His head, tail, and
claws were striped yellow, black, and red.  He withdrew himself as far as
he possibly could into his shell, and absolutely refused to peep out,
even when I put him into the water.  Finally, I threw him into a deep
pool and left him.  These mailed gentlemen, from the size of a foot or
more down to an inch, were very numerous in the spring; and now the
smaller kind appear again.


Saturday, October 9th.--Still dismal weather.  Our household, being
composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a
cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather.  For a week past we have
been especially gladdened with a little seamstress from Boston, about
seventeen years old; but of such a petite figure, that, at first view,
one would take her to be hardly in her teens.  She is very vivacious and
smart, laughing and singing and talking all the time,--talking sensibly;
but still taking the view of matters that a city girl naturally would.
If she were larger than she is, and of less pleasing aspect, I think she
might be intolerable; but being so small, and with a fair skin, and as
healthy as a wild-flower, she is really very agreeable; and to look at
her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun.  She never walks,
but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person,
does not give the idea of violence.  It is like a bird, hopping from twig
to twig, and chirping merrily all the time.  Sometimes she is rather
vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords
with it.  On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a
little girl, but really a little woman, with all the prerogatives and
liabilities of a woman.  This gives a new aspect to her, while the
girlish impression still remains, and is strangely combined with the
sense that this frolicsome maiden has the material for the sober bearing
of a wife.  She romps with the boys, runs races with them in the yard,
and up and down the stairs, and is heard scolding laughingly at their
rough play.  She asks William Allen to place her "on top of that horse,"
whereupon he puts his large brown hands about her waist, and, swinging
her to and fro, lifts her on horseback.  William threatens to rivet two
horseshoes round her neck, for having clambered, with the other girls and
boys, upon a load of hay, whereby the said load lost its balance and slid
off the cart.  She strings the seed-berries of roses together, making a
scarlet necklace of them, which she fastens about her throat.  She
gathers flowers of everlasting to wear in her bonnet, arranging them with
the skill of a dress-maker.  In the evening, she sits singing by the
hour, with the musical part of the establishment, often breaking into
laughter, whereto she is incited by the tricks of the boys.  The last
thing one hears of her, she is tripping up stairs to bed, talking
lightsomely or warbling; and one meets her in the morning, the very image
of bright morn itself, smiling briskly at you, so that one takes her for
a promise of cheerfulness through the day.  Be it said, with all the
rest, that there is a perfect maiden modesty in her deportment.  She has
just gone away, and the last I saw of her was her vivacious face peeping
through the curtain of the cariole, and nodding a gay farewell to the
family, who were shouting their adieus at the door.  With her other
merits, she is an excellent daughter, and supports her mother by the
labor of her hands.  It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how
much can be added to the enjoyment of a household by mere sunniness of
temper and liveliness of disposition; for her intellect is very ordinary,
and she never says anything worth hearing, or even laughing at, in
itself.  But she herself is an expression well worth studying.


Brook Farm, October 9th.--A walk this afternoon to Cow Island.  The
clouds had broken away towards noon, and let forth a few sunbeams, and
more and more blue sky ventured to appear, till at last it was really
warm and sunny,--indeed, rather too warm in the sheltered hollows, though
it is delightful to be too warm now, after so much stormy chillness.  O
the beauty of grassy slopes, and the hollow ways of paths winding between
hills, and the intervals between the road and wood-lots, where Summer
lingers and sits down, strewing dandelions of gold, and blue asters, as
her parting gifts and memorials!  I went to a grapevine, which I have
already visited several times, and found some clusters of grapes still
remaining, and now perfectly ripe.  Coming within view of the river, I
saw several wild ducks under the shadow of the opposite shore, which was
high, and covered with a grove of pines.  I should not have discovered
the ducks had they not risen and skimmed the surface of the glassy
stream, breaking its dark water with a bright streak, and, sweeping
round, gradually rose high enough to fly away.  I likewise started a
partridge just within the verge of the woods, and in another place a
large squirrel ran across the wood-path from one shelter of trees to the
other.  Small birds, in flocks, were flitting about the fields, seeking
and finding I know not what sort of food.  There were little fish, also,
darting in shoals through the pools and depths of the brooks, which are
now replenished to their brims, and rush towards the river with a swift,
amber-colored current.

Cow Island is not an island,--at least, at this season,--though, I
believe, in the time of freshets, the marshy Charles floods the meadows
all round about it, and extends across its communication with the
mainland.  The path to it is a very secluded one, threading a wood of
pines, and just wide enough to admit the loads of meadow hay which are
drawn from the splashy shore of the river.  The island has a growth of
stately pines, with tall and ponderous stems, standing at distance enough
to admit the eve to travel far among them; and, as there is no
underbrush, the effect is somewhat like looking among the pillars of a
church.

I returned home by the high-road.  On my right, separated from the road
by a level field, perhaps fifty yards across, was a range of young
forest-trees, dressed in their garb of autumnal glory.  The sun shone
directly upon them; and sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp
of autumn.  In its absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in what
poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this
charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description.  As I
beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild,
though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive
influence.  And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of
sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was
painted with but little relief of darksome lines, only a few evergreens.
But there was nothing inharmonious; and, on closer examination, it
appeared that all the tints had a relationship among themselves.  And
this, I suppose, is the reason that, while nature seems to scatter them
so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by their contrasts,
nor disturb, but only soothe.  The brilliant scarlet and the brilliant
yellow are different lines of the maple-leaves, and the first changes
into the last.  I saw one maple-tree, its centre yellow as gold, set in a
framework of red.  The native poplars have different shades of green,
verging towards yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine.  Most of
the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of summer; but where a change
has taken place, it is into a russet-red, warm, but sober.  These colors,
infinitely varied by the progress which different trees have made in
their decay, constitute almost the whole glory of autumnal woods; but it
is impossible to conceive how much is done with such scanty materials.
In my whole walk I saw only one man, and he was at a distance, in the
obscurity of the trees.  He had a horse and a wagon, and was getting a
load of dry brushwood.


Sunday, October 10th.--I visited my grapevine this afternoon, and ate the
last of its clusters.  This vine climbs around a young maple-tree, which
has now assumed the yellow leaf.  The leaves of the vine are more decayed
than those of the maple.  Thence to Cow Island, a solemn and thoughtful
walk.  Returned by another path of the width of a wagon, passing through
a grove of hard wood, the lightsome hues of which make the walk more
cheerful than among the pines.  The roots of oaks emerged from the soil,
and contorted themselves across the path.  The sunlight, also, broke
across in spots, and otherwheres the shadow was deep; but still there was
intermingling enough of bright hues to keep off the gloom from the whole
path.

Brooks and pools have a peculiar aspect at this season.  One knows that
the water must be cold, and one shivers a little at the sight of it; and
yet the grass about the pool may be of the deepest green, and the sun may
be shining into it.  The withered leaves which overhanging trees shed
upon its surface contribute much to the effect.

Insects have mostly vanished in the fields and woods.  I hear locusts
yet, singing in the sunny hours, and crickets have not yet finished their
song.  Once in a while I see a caterpillar,--this afternoon, for
instance, a red, hairy one, with black head and tail.  They do not appear
to be active, and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them.


Tuesday, October 12th.--The cawing of the crow resounds among the woods.
A sentinel is aware of your approach a great way off, and gives the alarm
to his comrades loudly and eagerly,--Caw, caw, caw!  Immediately the
whole conclave replies, and you behold them rising above the trees,
flapping darkly, and winging their way to deeper solitudes.  Sometimes,
however, they remain till you come near enough to discern their sable
gravity of aspect, each occupying a separate bough, or perhaps the
blasted tip-top of a pine.  As you approach, one after another, with loud
cawing, flaps his wings and throws himself upon the air.

There is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape nowadays than
the red patches of blueberry and whortleberry bushes, as seen on a
sloping hillside, like islands among the grass, with trees growing in
them; or crowning the summit of a bare, brown hill with their somewhat
russet liveliness; or circling round the base of an earth-imbedded rock.
At a distance, this hue, clothing spots and patches of the earth, looks
more like a picture than anything else,--yet such a picture as I never
saw painted.

The oaks are now beginning to look sere, and their leaves have withered
borders.  It is pleasant to notice the wide circle of greener grass
beneath the circumference of an overshadowing oak.  Passing an orchard,
one hears an uneasy rustling in the trees, and not as if they were
struggling with the wind.  Scattered about are barrels to contain the
gathered apples; and perhaps a great heap of golden or scarlet apples is
collected in one place.


Wednesday, October 13th.--A good view, from an upland swell of our
pasture, across the valley of the river Charles.  There is the meadow, as
level as a floor, and carpeted with green, perhaps two miles from the
rising ground on this side of the river to that on the opposite side.
The stream winds through the midst of the flat space, without any banks
at all; for it fills its bed almost to the brim, and bathes the meadow
grass on either side.  A tuft of shrubbery, at broken intervals, is
scattered along its border; and thus it meanders sluggishly along,
without other life than what it gains from gleaming in the sun.  Now,
into the broad, smooth meadow, as into a lake, capes and headlands put
themselves forth, and shores of firm woodland border it, covered with
variegated foliage, making the contrast so much the stronger of their
height and rough outline with the even spread of the plain.  And beyond,
and far away, rises a long, gradual swell of country, covered with an
apparently dense growth of foliage for miles, till the horizon terminates
it; and here and there is a house, or perhaps two, among the contiguity
of trees.  Everywhere the trees wear their autumnal dress, so that the
whole landscape is red, russet, orange, and yellow, blending in the
distance into a rich tint of brown-orange, or nearly that,--except the
green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground.

I took a long walk this morning, going first nearly to Newton, thence
nearly to Brighton, thence to Jamaica Plain, and thence home.  It was a
fine morning, with a northwest-wind; cool when facing the wind, but warm
and most genially pleasant in sheltered spots; and warm enough everywhere
while I was in motion.  I traversed most of the by-ways which offered
themselves to me; and, passing through one in which there was a double
line of grass between the wheel-tracks and that of the horses' feet, I
came to where had once stood a farm-house, which appeared to have been
recently torn down.  Most of the old timber and boards had been carted
away; a pile of it, however, remained.  The cellar of the house was
uncovered, and beside it stood the base and middle height of the chimney.
The oven, in which household bread had been baked for daily food, and
puddings and cake and jolly pumpkin-pies for festivals, opened its month,
being deprived of its iron door.  The fireplace was close at hand.  All
round the site of the house was a pleasant, sunny, green space, with old
fruit-trees in pretty fair condition, though aged.  There was a barn,
also aged, but in decent repair; and a ruinous shed, on the corner of
which was nailed a boy's windmill, where it had probably been turning and
clattering for years together, till now it was black with time and
weather-stain.  It was broken, but still it went round whenever the wind
stirred.  The spot was entirely secluded, there being no other house
within a mile or two.

No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just
at this moment.  It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set
down a confused group of gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins
of bright silk; but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which
would thus be produced.  And yet the splendor both of individual clusters
and of whole scenes is unsurpassable.  The oaks are now far advanced in
their change of hue; and, in certain positions relatively to the sun,
they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold, varying
according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight.  On the
sides which receive the direct rays, the effect is altogether rich; and
in other points of view it is equally beautiful, if less brilliant.  This
color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the maples and
walnuts.  The whole landscape is now covered with this indescribable
pomp; it is discerned on the uplands afar off; and Blue Hill in Milton,
at the distance of several miles, actually glistens with rich, dark
light,--no, not glistens, nor gleams,--but perhaps to say glows subduedly
will be a truer expression for it.

Met few people this morning; a grown girl, in company with a little boy,
gathering barberries in a secluded lane; a portly, autumnal gentleman,
wrapped in a greatcoat, who asked the way to Mr. Joseph Goddard's; and a
fish-cart from the city, the driver of which sounded his horn along the
lonesome way.


Monday, October 18th.--There has been a succession of days which were
cold and bright in the forenoon, and gray, sullen, and chill towards
night.  The woods have now taken a soberer tint than they wore at my last
date.  Many of the shrubs which looked brightest a little while ago are
now wholly bare of leaves.  The oaks have generally a russet-brown shade,
although some of them are still green, as are likewise other scattered
trees in the forests.  The bright yellow and the rich scarlet are no more
to be seen.  Scarcely any of them will now bear a close examination; for
this shows them to be rugged, wilted, and of faded, frost-bitten hue; but
at a distance, and in the mass, and enlivened by the sun, they have still
somewhat of the varied splendor which distinguished them a week ago.  It
is wonderful what a difference the sunshine makes; it is like varnish,
bringing out the hidden veins in a piece of rich wood.  In the cold, gray
atmosphere, such as that of most of our afternoons now, the landscape
lies dark,--brown, and in a much deeper shadow than if it were clothed in
green.  But, perchance, a gleam of sun falls on a certain spot of distant
shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many lines, standing
forth prominently from the dimness around it.  The sunlight gradually
spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley picture,--the
sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its gloom to an
almost laughing cheerfulness.  At such times I almost doubt whether the
foliage has lost any of its brilliancy.  But the clouds intercept the sun
again, and lo! old Autumn appears, clad in his cloak of russet-brown.

Beautiful now, while the general landscape lies in shadow, looks the
summit of a distant hill (say a mile off), with the sunshine brightening
the trees that cover it.  It is noticeable that the outlines of hills,
and the whole bulk of them at the distance of several miles, become
stronger, denser, and more substantial in this autumn atmosphere and in
these autumnal tints than in summer.  Then they looked blue, misty, and
dim.  Now they show their great humpbacks more plainly, as if they had
drawn nearer to us.

A waste of shrubbery and small trees, such as overruns the borders of the
meadows for miles together, looks much more rugged, wild, and savage in
its present brown color than when clad in green.

I passed through a very pleasant wood-path yesterday, quite shut in and
sheltered by trees that had not thrown off their yellow robes.  The sun
shone strongly in among them, and quite kindled them; so that the path
was brighter for their shade than if it had been quite exposed to the
sun.

In the village graveyard, which lies contiguous to the street, I saw a
man digging a grave, and one inhabitant after another turned aside from
his way to look into the grave and talk with the digger.  I heard him
laugh, with the traditionary mirthfulness of men of that occupation.

In the hollow of the woods, yesterday afternoon, I lay a long while
watching a squirrel, who was capering about among the trees over my head
(oaks and white-pines, so close together that their branches
intermingled).  The squirrel seemed not to approve of my presence,
for he frequently uttered a sharp, quick, angry noise, like that of a
scissors-grinder's wheel.  Sometimes I could see him sitting on an
impending bough, with his tail over his hack, looking down pryingly upon
me.  It seems to be a natural posture with him, to sit on his hind legs,
holding up his fore paws.  Anon, with a peculiarly quick start, he would
scramble along the branch, and be lost to sight in another part of the
tree, whence his shrill chatter would again be heard.  Then I would see
him rapidly descending the trunk, and running along the ground; and a
moment afterwards, casting my eye upward, I beheld him flitting like a
bird among the high limbs at the summit, directly above me.  Afterwards,
he apparently became accustomed to my society, and set about some
business of his own.  He came down to the ground, took up a piece of a
decayed bough (a heavy burden for such a small personage), and, with this
in his mouth, again climbed up and passed from the branches of one tree
to those of another, and thus onward and onward till he went out of
sight.  Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he
repeated several times.  I suppose he was building a nest,--at least, I
know not what else could have been his object.  Never was there such an
active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little
red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in
his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being
alone in the lonesome wood.  Indeed, he flitted about so quickly, and
showed himself in different places so suddenly, that I was in some doubt
whether there were not two or three of them.

I must mention again the very beautiful effect produced by the masses of
berry-bushes, lying like scarlet islands in the midst of withered
pasture-ground, or crowning the tops of barren hills.  Their hue, at a
distance, is lustrous scarlet, although it does not look nearly as bright
and gorgeous when examined close at hand.  But at a proper distance it is
a beautiful fringe on Autumn's petticoat.


Friday, October 22d.--A continued succession of unpleasant, Novembery
days, and autumn has made rapid progress in the work of decay.  It is now
somewhat of a rare good fortune to find a verdant, grassy spot, on some
slope, or in a dell; and even such seldom-seen oases are bestrewn with
dried brown leaves,--which, however, methinks, make the short, fresh
grass look greener around them.  Dry leaves are now plentiful everywhere,
save where there are none but pine-trees.  They rustle beneath the tread,
and there is nothing more autumnal than that sound.  Nevertheless, in a
walk this afternoon, I have seen two oaks which retained almost the
greenness of summer.  They grew close to the huge Pulpit Rock, so that
portions of their trunks appeared to grasp the rough surface; and they
were rooted beneath it, and, ascending high into the air, overshadowed
the gray crag with verdure.  Other oaks, here and there, have a few green
leaves or boughs among their rustling and rugged shade.

Yet, dreary as the woods are in a bleak, sullen day, there is a very
peculiar sense of warmth and a sort of richness of effect in the slope of
a bank and in sheltered spots, where bright sunshine falls, and the brown
oaken foliage is gladdened by it.  There is then a feeling of comfort,
and consequently of heart-warmth, which cannot be experienced in summer.

I walked this afternoon along a pleasant wood-path, gently winding, so
that but little of it could be seen at a time, and going up and down
small mounds, now plunging into a denser shadow and now emerging
from it.  Part of the way it was strewn with the dusky, yellow leaves of
white-pines,--the cast-off garments of last year; part of the way with
green grass, close-cropped, and very fresh for the season.  Sometimes the
trees met across it; sometimes it was bordered on one side by an old
rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and
thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone-wall of unknown
antiquity, older than the wood it closed in.  A stone-wall, when
shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes a
very pleasant and meditative object.  It does not belong too evidently to
man, having been built so long ago.  It seems a part of nature.

Yesterday I found two mushrooms in the woods, probably of the preceding
night's growth.  Also I saw a mosquito, frost-pinched, and so wretched
that I felt avenged for all the injuries which his tribe inflicted upon
me last summer, and so did not molest this lone survivor.

Walnuts in their green rinds are falling from the trees, and so are
chestnut-burrs.

I found a maple-leaf to-day, yellow all over, except its extremest point,
which was bright scarlet.  It looked as if a drop of blood were hanging
from it.  The first change of the maple-leaf is to scarlet; the next, to
yellow.  Then it withers, wilts, and drops off, as most of them have
already done.


October 27th.--Fringed gentians,--I found the last, probably, that will
be seen this year, growing on the margin of the brook.


1842.--Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally
subjected to him, to perform some act.  The commanding person suddenly to
die; and, for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to
perform that act.

"Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains
leaning on a staff, and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive."

A tri-weekly paper, to be called the Tertian Ague.

Subject for a picture,--Satan's reappearance in Pandemonium, shining out
from a mist, with "shape star-bright."

Five points of Theology,--Five Points at New York.

It seems a greater pity that an accomplished worker with the hand should
perish prematurely, than a person of great intellect; because
intellectual arts may be cultivated in the next world, but not physical
ones.

To trace out the influence of a frightful and disgraceful crime in
debasing and destroying a character naturally high and noble, the guilty
person being alone conscious of the crime.

A man, virtuous in his general conduct, but committing habitually some
monstrous crime,--as murder,--and doing this without the sense of guilt,
but with a peaceful conscience,--habit, probably, reconciling him to it;
but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of
his enormity.  His horror then.

The strangeness, if they could be foreseen and forethought, of events
which do not seem so strange after they have happened.  As, for instance,
to muse over a child's cradle, and foresee all the persons in different
parts of the world with whom he would have relations.

A man to swallow a small snake,--and it to be a symbol of a cherished
sin.

Questions as to unsettled points of history, and mysteries of nature, to
be asked of a mesmerized person.

Gordier, a young man of the Island of Jersey, was paying his addresses to
a young lady of Guernsey.  He visited the latter island, intending to be
married.  He disappeared on his way from the beach to his mistress's
residence, and was afterwards found dead in a cavity of the rocks.  After
a time, Galliard, a merchant of Guernsey, paid his addresses to the young
lady; but she always felt a strong, unaccountable antipathy to him.  He
presented her with a beautiful trinket.  The mother of Gordier, chancing
to see this trinket, recognized it as having been bought by her dead son
as a present for his mistress.  She expired on learning this; and
Galliard, being suspected of the murder, committed suicide.

The cure of Montreux in Switzerland, ninety-six years old, still vigorous
in mind and body, and able to preach.  He had a twin-brother, also a
preacher, and the exact likeness of himself.  Sometimes strangers have
beheld a white-haired, venerable, clerical personage, nearly a century
old; and, upon riding a few miles farther, have been astonished to meet
again this white-haired, venerable, century-old personage.

When the body of Lord Mohun (killed in a duel) was carried home,
bleeding, to his house, Lady Mohun was very angry because it was "flung
upon the best bed."

A prophecy, somewhat in the style of Swift's about Partridge, but
embracing various events and personages.

An incident that befell Dr. Harris, while a Junior at college.  Being in
great want of money to buy shirts or other necessaries, and not knowing
how to obtain it, he set out on a walk from Cambridge to Boston.  On the
way, he cut a stick, and, after walking a short distance, perceived that
something had become attached to the end of it.  It proved to be a gold
ring, with the motto, "God speed thee, friend."

Brobdingnag lay on the northwest coast of the American continent.

People with false hair and other artifices may be supposed to deceive
Death himself; so that he does not know when their hour is come.

Bees are sometimes drowned (or suffocated) in the honey which they
collect.  So some writers are lost in their collected learning.

Advice of Lady Pepperell's father on her marriage,--never to work one
moment after Saturday sunset,--never to lay down her knitting except in
the middle of the needle,--always to rise with the sun,--to pass an hour
daily with the housekeeper,--to visit every room daily from garret to
cellar,--to attend herself to the brewing of beer and the baking of
bread,--and to instruct every member of the family in their religious
duties.

Service of plate, presented by the city of London to Sir William
Pepperell, together with a table of solid silver.  The table very narrow,
but long; the articles of plate numerous, but of small dimensions,--the
tureen not holding more than three pints.  At the close of the
Revolution, when the Pepperell and Sparhawk property was confiscated,
this plate was sent to the grandson of Sir William, in London.  It was so
valuable, that Sheriff Moulton of old York, with six well-armed men,
accompanied it to Boston.  Pepperell's only daughter married Colonel
Sparhawk, a fine gentleman of the day.  Andrew Pepperell, the son, was
rejected by a young lady (afterwards the mother of Mrs. General Knox), to
whom he was on the point of marriage, as being addicted to low company
and low pleasures.  The lover, two days afterwards, in the streets of
Portsmouth, was sun-struck, and fell down dead.  Sir William had built an
elegant house for his son and his intended wife; but after the death of
the former he never entered it.  He lost his cheerfulness and social
qualities, and gave up intercourse with people, except on business.  Very
anxious to secure his property to his descendants by the provisions of
his will, which was drawn up by Judge Sewall, then a young lawyer.  Yet
the Judge lived to see two of Sir William's grandchildren so reduced that
they were to have been numbered among the town's poor, and were only
rescued from this fate by private charity.

The arms and crest of the Pepperell family were displayed over the door
of every room in Sir William's house.  In Colonel Sparhawk's house there
were forty portraits, most of them in full length.  The house built for
Sir William's son was occupied as barracks during the Revolution, and
much injured.  A few years after the peace, it was blown down by a
violent tempest, and finally no vestige of it was left, but there
remained only a summer-house and the family tomb.

At Sir William's death, his mansion was hung with black, while the body
lay in state for a week.  All the Sparhawk portraits were covered with
black crape, and the family pew was draped with black.  Two oxen were
roasted, and liquid hospitality dispensed in proportion.

Old lady's dress seventy or eighty years ago.  Brown brocade gown, with a
nice lawn handkerchief and apron,--short sleeves, with a little ruffle,
just below the elbow,--black mittens,--a lawn cap, with rich lace
border,--a black velvet hood on the back of the head, tied with black
ribbon under the chin.  She sat in an old-fashioned easy-chair, in a
small, low parlor,--the wainscot painted entirely black, and the walls
hung with a dark velvet paper.

A table, stationary ever since the house was built, extending the whole
length of a room.  One end was raised two steps higher than the rest.
The Lady Ursula, an early Colonial heroine, was wont to dine at the upper
end, while her servants sat below.  This was in the kitchen.  An old
garden and summer-house, and roses, currant-bushes, and tulips, which
Lady Ursula had brought from Grondale Abbey in Old England.  Although a
hundred and fifty years before, and though their roots were propagated
all over the country, they were still flourishing in the original garden.
This Lady Ursula was the daughter of Lord Thomas Cutts of Grondale Abbey
in England.  She had been in love with an officer named Fowler, who was
supposed to have been slain in battle.  After the death of her father and
mother, Lady Ursula came to Kittery, bringing twenty men-servants and
several women.  After a time, a letter arrived from her lover, who was
not killed, but merely a prisoner to the French.  He announced his
purpose to come to America, where he would arrive in October.  A few days
after the letter came, she went out in a low carriage to visit her
work-people, and was blessing the food for their luncheon, when she fell
dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all the rest save one.  They
were buried where the massacre took place, and a stone was erected, which
(possibly) still remains.  The lady's family had a grant from Sir
Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and her brother had
likewise come over and settled in the vicinity.  I believe very little of
this story.  Long afterwards, at about the commencement of the
Revolution, a descendant of Fowler came from England, and applied to the
Judge of Probate to search the records for a will, supposed to have been
made by Lady Ursula in favor of her lover as soon as she heard of his
existence.  In the mean time the estate had been sold to Colonel Whipple.
No will could be found.  (Lady Ursula was old Mrs. Cutts, widow of
President Cutts.)

The mode of living of Lady Ursula's brother in Kittery.  A drawbridge to
the house, which was raised every evening, and lowered in the morning,
for the laborers and the family to pass out.  They kept thirty cows, a
hundred sheep, and several horses.  The house spacious,--one room large
enough to contain forty or fifty guests.  Two silver branches for
candles,--the walls ornamented with paintings and needlework.  The floors
were daily rubbed with wax, and shone like a mahogany table.  A domestic
chaplain, who said prayers every morning and evening in a small apartment
called the chapel.  Also a steward and butler.  The family attended the
Episcopal Church at Christmas, Easter, and Good Friday, and gave a grand
entertainment once a year.

Madam Cutts, at the last of these entertainments, wore a black damask
gown, and cuffs with double lace ruffles, velvet shoes, blue silk
stockings, white and silver stomacher.  The daughter and granddaughters
in rich brocades and yellow satin.  Old Major Cutts in brown velvet,
laced with gold, and a large wig.  The parson in his silk cassock, and
his helpmate in brown damask.  Old General Atkinson in scarlet velvet,
and his wife and daughters in white damask.  The Governor in black
velvet, and his lady in crimson tabby trimmed with silver.  The ladies
wore bell-hoops, high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and
enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brussels lace hanging
thence to the waist.

Among the eatables, a silver tub of the capacity of four gallons, holding
a pyramid of pancakes powdered with white sugar.

The date assigned to all this about 1690.

What is the price of a day's labor in Lapland, where the sun never sets
for six months?

Miss Asphyxia Davis!

A life, generally of a grave hue, may be said to be embroidered with
occasional sports and fantasies.

A father confessor,--his reflections on character, and the contrast of
the inward man with the outward, as he looks around on his congregation,
all whose secret sins are known to him.

A person with an ice-cold hand,--his right hand, which people ever
afterwards remember when once they have grasped it.

A stove possessed by a Devil.


June 1st, 1842.--One of my chief amusements is to see the boys sail their
miniature vessels on the Frog Pond.  There is a great variety of shipping
owned among the young people, and they appear to have a considerable
knowledge of the art of managing vessels.  There is a full-rigged
man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail, that sometimes
makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the pond, it so
identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it has the
effect of a picture.  All its motions,--its tossing up and down on the
small waves, and its sinking and rising in a calm swell, its heeling to
the breeze,--the whole effect, in short, is that of a real ship at sea;
while, moreover, there is something that kindles the imagination more
than the reality would do.  If we see a real, great ship, the mind grasps
and possesses, within its real clutch, all that there is of it; while
here the mimic ship is the representation of an ideal one, and so gives
us a more imaginative pleasure.  There are many schooners that ply to and
fro on the pond, and pilot-boats, all perfectly rigged.  I saw a race,
the other day, between the ship above mentioned and a pilot-boat, in
which the latter came off conqueror.  The boys appear to be well
acquainted with all the ropes and sails, and can call them by their
nautical names.  One of the owners of the vessels remains on one side of
the pond, and the other on the opposite side, and so they send the little
bark to and fro, like merchants of different countries, consigning their
vessels to one another.

Generally, when any vessel is on the pond, there are full-grown
spectators, who look on with as much interest as the boys themselves.
Towards sunset, this is especially the case: for then are seen young
girls and their lovers; mothers, with their little boys in hand;
schoolgirls, beating hoops round about, and occasionally running to the
side of the pond; rough tars, or perhaps masters or young mates of
vessels, who make remarks about the miniature shipping, and occasionally
give professional advice to the navigators; visitors from the country;
gloved and caned young gentlemen;--in short, everybody stops to take a
look.  In the mean time; dogs are continually plunging into the pond, and
swimming about, with noses pointed upward, and snatching at floating
chips; then, emerging, they shake themselves, scattering a horizontal
shower on the clean gowns of ladies and trousers of gentlemen; then
scamper to and fro on the grass, with joyous barks.

Some boys cast off lines of twine with pin-hooks, and perhaps pull out a
horned-pout,--that being, I think, the only kind of fish that inhabits
the Frog Pond.

The ship-of-war above mentioned is about three feet from stem to stern,
or possibly a few inches more.  This, if I mistake not, was the size of a
ship-of-the-line in the navy of Liliput.

Fancy pictures of familiar places which one has never been in, as the
green-room of a theatre, etc.

The famous characters of history,--to imagine their spirits now extant on
earth, in the guise of various public or private personages.

The case quoted in Combe's Physiology of a young man of great talents and
profound knowledge of chemistry, who had in view some new discovery of
importance.  In order to put his mind into the highest possible activity,
he shut himself up for several successive days, and used various methods
of excitement.  He had a singing-girl, he drank spirits, smelled,
penetrating odors, sprinkled Cologne-water round the room, etc., etc.
Eight days thus passed, when he was seized with a fit of frenzy which
terminated in mania.

Flesh and Blood,--a firm of butchers.

Miss Polly Syllable, a schoolmistress.

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

A spendthrift,--in one sense he has his money's worth by the purchase of
large lots of repentance and other dolorous commodities.

To symbolize moral or spiritual disease by disease of the body; as thus,
--when a person committed any sin, it might appear in some form on the
body,--this to be wrought out.

"Shrieking fish," a strange idea of Leigh Hunt.

In my museum, all the ducal rings that have been thrown into the
Adriatic.

An association of literary men in the other world,--or dialogues of the
dead, or something of that kind.

Imaginary diseases to be cured by impossible remedies,--as a dose of the
Grand Elixir, in the yolk of a Phoenix's egg.  The disease may be either
moral or physical.

A physician for the cure of moral diseases.

To point out the moral slavery of one who deems himself a free man.

A stray leaf from the book of fate, picked up in the street.


Concord, August 5th.--A rainy day,--a rainy day.  I am commanded to take
pen in hand, and I am therefore banished to the little ten-foot-square
apartment misnamed my study; but perhaps the dismalness of the day and
the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent characteristics of what
I write.  And what is there to write about?  Happiness has no succession
of events, because it is a part of eternity; and we have been living in
eternity ever since we came to this old manse.  Like Enoch, we seem to
have been translated to the other state of being, without having passed
through death.  Our spirits must have flitted away unconsciously, and we
can only perceive that we have cast off our mortal part by the more real
and earnest life of our souls.  Externally, our Paradise has very much
the aspect of a pleasant old domicile on earth.  This antique house--for
it looks antique, though it was created by Providence expressly for our
use, and at the precise time when we wanted it--stands behind a noble
avenue of balm-of-Gilead trees; and when we chance to observe a passing
traveller through the sunshine and the shadow of this long avenue, his
figure appears too dim and remote to disturb the sense of blissful
seclusion.  Few, indeed, are the mortals who venture within our sacred
precincts.  George Prescott, who has not yet grown earthly enough, I
suppose, to be debarred from occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily
to bring three pints of milk from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also,
he makes an offering of mortal flowers.  Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and
has been feasted on our nectar and ambrosia.  Mr. Thoreau has twice
listened to the music of the spheres, which, for our private convenience,
we have packed into a musical-box.  E. H------, who is much more at home
among spirits than among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times merely
to welcome us to the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into
some other region of infinite space.  One rash mortal, on the second
Sunday after our arrival, obtruded himself upon us in a gig.  There have
since been three or four callers, who preposterously think that the
courtesies of the lower world are to be responded to by people whose home
is in Paradise.  I must not forget to mention that the butcher comes
twice or thrice a week; and we have so far improved upon the custom of
Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of
some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to
the happiness of becoming our sustenance.  Would that I were permitted to
record the celestial dainties that kind Heaven provided for us on the
first day of our arrival!  Never, surely, was such food heard of on
earth,--at least, not by me.  Well, the above-mentioned persons are
nearly all that have entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue;
except, indeed, a certain sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our
orchard, and another who came with a new cistern.  For it is one of the
drawbacks upon our Eden that it contains no water fit either to drink or
to bathe in; so that the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend.
I wonder why Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble
up at our doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for
such a favor.  At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of
sending to the outer world for water.  Only imagine Adam trudging out of
Paradise with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to
bathe in!  Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our
water.)  In other respects Providence has treated us pretty tolerably
well; but here I shall expect something further to be done.  Also, in the
way of future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable.  Animals
(except, perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most
paradisiacal spheres.  And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue,
now and then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company
of cows, whose sweet breath well repays us for the food which they
obtain.  There are likewise a few hens, whose quiet cluck is heard
pleasantly about the house.  A black dog sometimes stands at the farther
extremity of the avenue, and looks wistfully hitherward; but when I
whistle to him, he puts his tail between his legs, and trots away.
Foolish dog! if he had more faith, he should have bones enough.


Saturday, August 6th.--Still a dull day, threatening rain, yet without
energy of character enough to rain outright.  However, yesterday there
were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring.
As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout
pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty.  I wonder
where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose
palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades,
it has the property of filling itself forever, and never being full.

After breakfast I took my fishing-rod, and went down through our orchard
to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in possession
of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish.  This river of ours is
the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with.  I had spent
three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before I could
determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to decide
the question by the testimony of others, and not by my own observation.
Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a bright, pebbly
shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of glistening sand in any
part of its course; but it slumbers along between broad meadows, or
kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and pastures, or bathes the
overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other waterloving plants.  Flags
and rushes grow along its shallow margin.  The yellow water-lily spreads
its broad flat leaves upon its surface; and the fragrant white pond-lily
occurs in many favored spots,--generally selecting a situation just so
far from the river's brink that it cannot be grasped except at the hazard
of plunging in.  But thanks be to the beautiful flower for growing at any
rate.  It is a marvel whence it derives its loveliness and perfume,
sprouting as it does from the black mud over which the river sleeps, and
from which the yellow lily likewise draws its unclean life and noisome
odor.  So it is with many people in this world; the same soil and
circumstances may produce the good and beautiful, and the wicked and
ugly.  Some have the faculty of assimilating to themselves only what is
evil, and so they become as noisome as the yellow water-lily.  Some
assimilate none but good influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and
spotless pond-lily, whose very breath is a blessing to all the region
round about. . . . Among the productions of the river's margin, I must
not forget the pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water,
and shoots up a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large
green leaves.  Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with
pond-lilies, and relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being
all alike children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with one
another. . . .

I bathe once, and often twice, a day in our river; but one dip into the
salt sea would be worth more than a whole week's soaking in such a
lifeless tide.  I have read of a river somewhere (whether it be in
classic regions or among our Western Indians I know not) which seemed to
dissolve and steal away the vigor of those who bathed in it.  Perhaps our
stream will be found to have this property.  Its water, however, is
pleasant in its immediate effect, being as soft as milk, and always
warmer than the air.  Its hue has a slight tinge of gold, and my limbs,
when I behold them through its medium, look tawny.  I am not aware that
the inhabitants of Concord resemble their native river in any of their
moral characteristics.  Their forefathers, certainly, seem to have had
the energy and impetus of a mountain torrent, rather than the torpor of
this listless stream,--as it was proved by the blood with which they
stained their river of Peace.  It is said there are plenty of fish in it;
but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an
enormous eel.  The former made his escape to his native element,--the
latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his
flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud.  On the whole, Concord River
is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so
near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard.  Neither is it
without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and in
the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows
and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.  Pleasant it
is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom,
which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to
go against its current almost as freely as with it.  Pleasant, too, to
watch an angler, as he strays along the brink, sometimes sheltering
himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his line along the water,
in hopes to catch a pickerel.  But, taking the river for all in all, I
can find nothing more fit to compare it with than one of the half-torpid
earthworms which I dig up for bait.  The worm is sluggish, and so is the
river,--the river is muddy, and so is the worm.  You hardly know whether
either of them be alive or dead; but still, in the course of time, they
both manage to creep away.  The best aspect of the Concord is when there
is a northwestern breeze curling its surface, in a bright, sunshiny day.
It then assumes a vivacity not its own.  Moonlight, also, gives it
beauty, as it does to all scenery of earth or water.


Sunday, August 7th.--At sunset last evening I ascended the hill-top
opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the
river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.
Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better
appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it.  Certainly, as I beheld
it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural
beauty.  It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping
in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central
line of a broad vale on either side.  At a distance, it looked like a
strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized
that it seemed akin to the upper regions.  Nearer the base of the hill, I
could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a
distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality; because,
knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality which the
soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty.  All the sky,
too, and the rich clouds of sunset, were reflected in the peaceful bosom
of the river; and surely, if its bosom can give back such an adequate
reflection of heaven, it cannot be so gross and impure as I described it
yesterday.  Or, if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a human
breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may still have
the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its depths, and
therefore of enjoying it.  It is a comfortable thought, that the smallest
and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of heaven.  Let us
remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all spiritual life to some
people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may perhaps see the image of
His face.  This dull river has a deep religion of its own: so, let us
trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.

The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill, has
no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet beauty, in
keeping with the river.  There are broad and peaceful meadows, which, I
think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery.  The
heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give,
because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a
meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness
which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air.  The hills
which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual
ridges, some of them densely covered with wood.  The white village, at a
distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills.  The
verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season
of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable
progress over trees and grass.  Last evening, after the copious showers
of the preceding two days, it was worthy of early June, or, indeed, of a
world just created.  Had I not then been alone, I should have had a far
deeper sense of beauty, for I should have looked through the medium of
another spirit.  Along the horizon there were masses of those deep clouds
in which the fancy may see images of all things that ever existed or were
dreamed of.  Over our old manse, of which I could catch but a glimpse
among its embowering trees, appeared the immensely gigantic figure of a
hound, crouching down with head erect, as if keeping watchful guard while
the master of the mansion was away. . . . How sweet it was to draw near
my own home, after having lived homeless in the world so long! . . . .
With thoughts like these, I descended the hill, and clambered over the
stone-wall, and crossed the road, and passed up our avenue, while the
quaint old house put on an aspect of welcome.


Monday, August 8th.--I wish I could give a description of our house, for
it really has a character of its own, which is more than can be said of
most edifices in these days.  It is two stories high, with a third story
of attic chambers in the gable-roof.  When I first visited it, early in
June, it looked pretty much as it did during the old clergyman's
lifetime, showing all the dust and disarray that might be supposed to
have gathered about him in the course of sixty years of occupancy.  The
rooms seemed never to have been painted; at all events, the walls and
panels, as well as the huge cross-beams, had a venerable and most dismal
tinge of brown.  The furniture consisted of high-backed, short-legged,
rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts, stately
chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black frames, all of which
were probably fashionable in the days of Dr. Ripley's predecessor.  It
required some energy of imagination to conceive the idea of transforming
this ancient edifice into a comfortable modern residence.  However, it
has been successfully accomplished.  The old Doctor's sleeping-apartment,
which was the front room on the ground-floor, we have converted into a
parlor; and by the aid of cheerful paint and paper, a gladsome carpet,
pictures and engravings, new furniture, bijouterie, and a daily supply of
flowers, it has become one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the
whole world.  The shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for its
aspect has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theatre.
Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished
forever.  The opposite room has been metamorphosed into a store-room.
Through the house, both in the first and second story, runs a spacious
hall or entry, occupying more space than is usually devoted to such a
purpose in modern times.  This feature contributes to give the whole
house an airy, roomy, and convenient appearance; we can breathe the freer
by the aid of the broad passageway.  The front door of the hall looks up
the stately avenue, which I have already mentioned; and the opposite door
opens into the orchard, through which a path descends to the river.  In
the second story we have at present fitted up three rooms,--one being our
own chamber, and the opposite one a guest-chamber, which contains the
most presentable of the old Doctor's ante-Revolutionary furniture.  After
all, the moderns have invented nothing better, as chamber furniture, than
these chests of drawers, which stand on four slender legs, and rear an
absolute tower of mahogany to the ceiling, the whole terminating in a
fantastically carved summit.  Such a venerable structure adorns our
guest-chamber.  In the rear of the house is the little room which I call
my study, and which, in its day, has witnessed the intellectual labors of
better students than myself.  It contains, with some additions and
alterations, the furniture of my bachelor-room in Boston; but there is a
happier disposal of things now.  There is a little vase of flowers on one
of the bookcases, and a larger bronze vase of graceful ferns that
surmounts the bureau.  In size the room is just what it ought to be; for
I never could compress my thoughts sufficiently to write in a very
spacious room.  It has three windows, two of which are shaded by a large
and beautiful willow-tree, which sweeps against the overhanging eaves.
On this side we have a view into the orchard, and, beyond, a glimpse of
the river.  The other window is the one from which Mr. Emerson, the
predecessor of Dr. Ripley, beheld the first fight of the Revolution,--
which he might well do, as the British troops were drawn up within a
hundred yards of the house; and on looking forth just now, I could still
perceive the western abutments of the old bridge, the passage of which
was contested.  The new monument is visible from base to summit.

Notwithstanding all we have done to modernize the old place, we seem
scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity.  It is evident that
other wedded pairs have spent their honeymoons here, that children have
been born here, and people have grown old and died in these rooms,
although for our behoof the same apartments have consented to look
cheerful once again.  Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and
corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in
the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious
improvements.  We have seen no apparitions as yet; but we hear strange
noises, especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the
parlor, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my
study.  Nay, if I mistake not (for I was half asleep), there was a sound
as of some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber.
This must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons.  There is a
whole chest of them in the garret; but he need have no apprehensions of
our disturbing them.  I never saw the old patriarch myself, which I
regret, as I should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at
ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt.

Externally the house presents the same appearance as in the Doctor's day.
It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of many
years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish hue,
which entirely suits the antique form of the structure.  To repaint its
reverend face would be a real sacrilege.  It would look like old Dr.
Ripley in a brown wig.  I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and
lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to
be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high
wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by.  But so it is.  The
cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and
such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles,
silver taper-stands, and bronze and alabaster flower-vases do not seem at
all impertinent.  It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm for
new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with ideas;
though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his exterior
to the passing fashions of the day.


August 9th.--Our orchard in its day has been a very productive and
profitable one; and we were told that in one year it returned Dr. Ripley
a hundred dollars, besides defraying the expense of repairing the house.
It is now long past its prime: many of the trees are moss-grown, and have
dead and rotten branches intermixed among the green and fruitful ones.
And it may well be so; for I suppose some of the trees may have been set
out by Mr. Emerson, who died in the first year of the Revolutionary War.
Neither will the fruit, probably, bear comparison with the delicate
productions of modern pomology.  Most of the trees seem to have abundant
burdens upon them; but they are homely russet apples, fit only for baking
and cooking.  (But we are yet to have practical experience of our fruit.)
Justice Shallow's orchard, with its choice pippins and leather-coats, was
doubtless much superior.  Nevertheless, it pleases me to think of the
good minister, walking in the shadows of these old, fantastically shaped
apples-trees, here plucking some of the fruit to taste, there pruning
away a too luxuriant branch, and all the while computing how many barrels
may be filled, and how large a sum will be added to his stipend by their
sale.  And the same trees offer their fruit to me as freely as they did
to him,--their old branches, like withered hands and arms, holding out
apples of the same flavor as they held out to Dr. Ripley in his lifetime.
Thus the trees, as living existences, form a peculiar link between the
dead and us.  My fancy has always found something very interesting in an
orchard.  Apple-trees, and all fruit-trees, have a domestic character
which brings them into relationship with man.  They have lost, in a great
measure, the wild nature of the forest-tree, and have grown humanized by
receiving the care of man, and by contributing to his wants.  They have
become a part of the family; and their individual characters are as well
understood and appreciated as those of the human members.  One tree is
harsh and crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another
exhausts itself with its free-hearted bounties.  Even the shapes of
apple-trees have great individuality, into such strange postures do they
put themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all
directions.  And when they have stood around a house for many years, and
held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened their
hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost
sacrilege to cut them down.

Besides the apple-trees, there are various other kinds of fruit in close
vicinity to the house.  When we first arrived, there were several trees
of ripe cherries, but so sour that we allowed them to wither upon the
branches.  Two long rows of currant-bushes supplied us abundantly for
nearly four weeks.  There are a good many peach-trees, but all of an old
date,--their branches rotten, gummy, and mossy,--and their fruit, I fear,
will be of very inferior quality.  They produce most abundantly,
however,--the peaches being almost as numerous as the leaves; and even
the sprouts and suckers from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon
them.  Then three are pear-trees of various kinds, and one or two
quince-trees.  On the whole, these fruit-trees, and the other items and
adjuncts of the place, convey a very agreeable idea of the outward
comfort in which the good old Doctor must have spent his life.
Everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be
supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous.
There is a barn, which probably used to be filled annually with his hay
and other agricultural products.  There are sheds, and a hen-house, and a
pigeon-house, and an old stone pigsty, the open portion of which is
overgrown with tall weeds, indicating that no grunter has recently
occupied it. . . . I have serious thoughts of inducting a new incumbent
in this part of the parsonage.  It is our duty to support a pig, even if
we have no design of feasting upon him; and, for my own part, I have a
great sympathy and interest for the whole race of porkers, and should
have much amusement in studying the character of a pig.  Perhaps I might
try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature, and cultivate his
affections.  A cat, too, and perhaps a dog, would be desirable additions
to our household.


August 10th.--The natural taste of man for the original Adam's occupation
is fast developing itself in me.  I find that I am a good deal interested
in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came here, I do not
feel the same affection for the plants that I should if the seed had been
sown by my own hands.  It is something like nursing and educating another
person's children.  Still, it was a very pleasant moment when I gathered
the first string-beans, which were the earliest esculent that the garden
contributed to our table.  And I love to watch the successive development
of each new vegetable, and mark its daily growth, which always affects me
with surprise.  It is as if something were being created under my own
inspection, and partly by my own aid.  One day, perchance, I look at my
bean-vines, and see only the green leaves clambering up the poles; again,
to-morrow, I give a second glance, and there are the delicate blossoms;
and a third day, on a somewhat closer observation, I discover the tender
young beans, hiding among the foliage.  Then, each morning, I watch the
swelling of the pods and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield
their treasures.  All this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto
unthought of, to the business of providing sustenance for my family.  I
suppose Adam felt it in Paradise; and, of merely and exclusively earthly
enjoyments, there are few purer and more harmless to be experienced.
Speaking of beans, by the way, they are a classical food, and their
culture must have been the occupation of many ancient sages and heroes.
Summer-squashes are a very pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with.
They grow in the forms of urns and vases,--some shallow, others deeper,
and all with a beautifully scalloped edge.  Almost any squash in our
garden might be copied by a sculptor, and would look lovely in marble, or
in china; and, if I could afford it, I would have exact imitations of the
real vegetable as portions of my dining-service.  They would be very
appropriate dishes for holding garden-vegetables.  Besides the
summer-squashes, we have the crook-necked winter-squash, which I always
delight to look at, when it turns up its big rotundity to ripen in the
autumn sun.  Except a pumpkin, there is no vegetable production that
imparts such an idea of warmth and comfort to the beholder.  Our own
crop, however, does not promise to be very abundant; for the leaves
formed such a superfluous shade over the young blossoms, that most of
them dropped off without producing the germ of fruit.  Yesterday and
to-day I have cut off an immense number of leaves, and have thus given
the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by the air and sunshine; but
the season is too far advanced, I am afraid, for the squashes to attain
any great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun.  We have muskmelons and
watermelons, which promise to supply us with as many as we can eat.
After all, the greatest interest of these vegetables does not seem to
consist in their being articles of food.  It is rather that we love to
see something born into the world; and when a great squash or melon is
produced, it is a large and tangible existence, which the imagination can
seize hold of and rejoice in.  I love, also, to see my own works
contributing to the life and well-being of animate nature.  It is
pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my squash-blossoms,
though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away to some unknown
hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what my garden has
given them.  But there is much more honey in the world, and so I am
content.  Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is a very
beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and in a mass
in a broad field, rustling and waving, and surging up and down in the
breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon.  We have as many as fifty
hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply.  Pray
Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to think
that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should be
thrown away.  But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so will
the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own.  But hens we
must certainly keep.  There is something very sociable and quiet, and
soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and,
in an idle and half-meditative mood, it is very pleasant to watch a party
of hens picking up their daily subsistence, with a gallant chanticleer in
the midst of them.  Milton had evidently contemplated such a picture with
delight.

I find that I have not given a very complete idea of our garden, although
it certainly deserves an ample record in this chronicle, since my labors
in it are the only present labors of my life.  Besides what I have
mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, which to-day yielded us the first
cucumber of the season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots, and
another of parsnips and turnips, none of which promise us a very abundant
harvest.  In truth, the soil is worn out, and, moreover, received very
little manure this season.  Also, we have cabbages in superfluous
abundance, inasmuch as we neither of us have the least affection for
them; and it would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the cook, to eat
fifty head of cabbages.  Tomatoes, too, we shall have by and by.  At our
first arrival, we found green peas ready for gathering, and these,
instead of the string-beans, were the first offering of the garden to our
board.


Saturday, August 13th.--My life, at this time, is more like that of a
boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a boy.  It is
usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony; but I seem
to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy trust in
Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had learned that
there was a world beyond Paradise.  My chief anxiety consists in watching
the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how they are affected by
the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of one squash and rejoicing
at the luxurious growth of another.  It is as if the original relation
between man and Nature were restored in my case, and as if I were to look
exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and myself,--to trust to her
for food and clothing, and all things needful, with the full assurance
that she would not fail me.  The fight with the world,--the struggle of a
man among men,--the agony of the universal effort to wrench the means of
living from a host of greedy competitors,--all this seems like a dream to
me.  My business is merely to live and to enjoy; and whatever is
essential to life and enjoyment will come as naturally as the dew from
heaven.  This is, practically at least, my faith.  And so I awake in the
morning with a boyish thoughtlessness as to how the outgoings of the day
are to be provided for, and its incomings rendered certain.  After
breakfast, I go forth into my garden, and gather whatever the bountiful
Mother has made fit for our present sustenance; and of late days she
generally gives me two squashes and a cucumber, and promises me green
corn and shell-beans very soon.  Then I pass down through our orchard to
the river-side, and ramble along its margin in search of flowers.
Usually I discern a fragrant white lily, here and there along the shore,
growing, with sweet prudishness, beyond the grasp of mortal arm.  But it
does not escape me so.  I know what is its fitting destiny better than
the silly flower knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet
trousers, and seize the shy lily by its slender stem.  Thus I make prize
of five or six, which are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a
single morning;--some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like
virgins with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as
Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower.  A
perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers.  Besides these, I
gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist soil
by the river-side,--an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and grace
than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and hedge-rows,--
sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and broad green
leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize so well with
the white lilies.  For the last two or three days, I have found scattered
stalks of the cardinal-flower, the gorgeous scarlet of which it is a joy
even to remember.  The world is made brighter and sunnier by flowers of
such a hue.  Even perfume, which otherwise is the soul and spirit of a
flower, may be spared when it arrays itself in this scarlet glory.  It is
a flower of thought and feeling, too; it seems to have its roots deep
down in the hearts of those who gaze at it.  Other bright flowers
sometimes impress me as wanting sentiment; but it is not so with this.

Well, having made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them.
. . . . Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance
scribble in this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at
his own pleasure, till the dinner-hour.  In pleasant days, the chief
event of the afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.
. . . . So comes the night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the
world would call idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more
appropriate epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been
spent amiss.  True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours,
to spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good
to live as if this world were heaven.  And so it is, and so it shall be,
although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil
will mingle itself with our realities.


Monday, August 15th.--George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston in
the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us.  It was a pleasant
sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled round at the
door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a household, a man
having a tangible existence and locality in the world,--when friends came
to avail themselves of our hospitality.  It was a sort of acknowledgment
and reception of us into the corps of married people,--a sanction by no
means essential to our peace and well-being, but yet agreeable enough to
receive.  So we welcomed them cordially at the door, and ushered them
into our parlor, and soon into the supper-room. . . . The night flitted
over us all, and passed away, and up rose a gray and sullen morning,
. . . . and we had a splendid breakfast of flapjacks, or slapjacks, and
whortleberries, which I gathered on a neighboring hill, and perch, bream,
and pout, which I hooked out of the river the evening before.  About nine
o'clock, Hillard and I set out for a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the
way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain his guidance or directions, and he
accompanied us in his own illustrious person.  We turned aside a little
from our way, to visit Mr. ------, a yeoman, of whose homely and
self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very high opinion.  We found him
walking in his fields, a short and stalwart and sturdy personage of
middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind expression, and manners of
natural courtesy.  He had a very free flow of talk; for, with a little
induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the
nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had
come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh
earth about them.  His views were sensible and characteristic, and had
grown in the soil where we found them; . . . . and he is certainly a man
of intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something
to be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he
digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of the ground.

After leaving Mr. ------, we proceeded through wood-paths to Walden Pond,
picking blackberries of enormous size along the way.  The pond itself was
beautiful and refreshing to my soul, after such long and exclusive
familiarity with our tawny and sluggish river.  It lies embosomed among
wooded hills, it is not very extensive, but large enough for waves to
dance upon its surface, and to look like a piece of blue firmament,
earthen-circled.  The shore has a narrow, pebbly strand, which it was
worth a day's journey to look at, for the sake of the contrast between it
and the weedy, oozy margin of the river.  Farther within its depths, you
perceive a bottom of pure white sand, sparkling through the transparent
water, which, methought, was the very purest liquid in the world.  After
Mr. Emerson left us, Hillard and I bathed in the pond, and it does really
seem as if my spirit, as well as corporeal person, were refreshed by that
bath.  A good deal of mud and river slime had accumulated on my soul; but
these bright waters washed them all away.

We returned home in due season for dinner. . . . To my misfortune,
however, a box of Mediterranean wine proved to have undergone the acetous
fermentation; so that the splendor of the festival suffered some
diminution.  Nevertheless, we ate our dinner with a good appetite, and
afterwards went universally to take our several siestas.  Meantime there
came a shower, which so besprinkled the grass and shrubbery as to make it
rather wet for our after-tea ramble.  The chief result of the walk was
the bringing home of an immense burden of the trailing clematis-vine, now
just in blossom, and with which all our flower-stands and vases are this
morning decorated.  On our return we found Mr. and Mrs. S------, and E.
H------, who shortly took their leave, and we sat up late, telling
ghost-stories.  This morning, at seven, our friends left us.  We were
both pleased with the visit, and so, I think, were our guests.

          *     *     *     *     *     *

Monday, August 22d.--I took a walk through the woods yesterday afternoon,
to Mr. Emerson's, with a book which Margaret Fuller had left, after a
call on Saturday eve.  I missed the nearest way, and wandered into a very
secluded portion of the forest; for forest it might justly be called, so
dense and sombre was the shade of oaks and pines.  Once I wandered into a
tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I could scarcely force
a passage through.  Nothing is more annoying than a walk of this kind,
where one is tormented by an innumerable host of petty impediments.  It
incenses and depresses me at the same time.  Always when I flounder into
the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine themselves about my legs,
and brush my face, and seize hold of my clothes, with their multitudinous
grip,--always, in such a difficulty, I feel as if it were almost as well
to lie down and die in rage and despair as to go one step farther.  It is
laughable, after I have got out of the moil, to think how miserably it
affected me for the moment; but I had better learn patience betimes, for
there are many such bushy tracts in this vicinity, on the margins of
meadows, and my walks will often lead me into them.  Escaping from the
bushes, I soon came to an open space among the woods,--a very lovely
spot, with the tall old trees standing around as quietly as if no one had
intruded there throughout the whole summer.  A company of crows were
holding their Sabbath on their summits.  Apparently they felt themselves
injured or insulted by my presence; for, with one consent, they began to
Caw! caw! caw! and, launching themselves sullenly on the air, took flight
to some securer solitude.  Mine, probably, was the first human shape that
they had seen all day long,--at least, if they had been stationary in
that spot; but perhaps they had winged their way over miles and miles of
country, had breakfasted on the summit of Graylock, and dined at the base
of Wachusett, and were merely come to sup and sleep among the quiet woods
of Concord.  But it was my impression at the time, that they had sat
still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day,
and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of
worshippers.  A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in
spite of his gravity of mien and black attire.  Crows are certainly
thieves, and probably infidels.  Nevertheless, their voices yesterday
were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny,
warm, yet autumnal afternoon.  They were so far above my head that their
loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it.
There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but an
audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet the
mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle and
lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming autumn.
Alas for the summer!  The grass is still verdant on the hills and in the
valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as green;
the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in the
hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid as
they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every beam
of sunshine there is an autumnal influence.  I know not how to describe
it.  Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and a
mildness in the brightest of the sunshine.  A breeze cannot stir without
thrilling me with the breath of autumn, and I behold its pensive glory in
the far, golden gleams among the long shadows of the trees.  The flowers,
even the brightest of them,--the golden-rod and the gorgeous cardinals,--
the most glorious flowers of the year,--have this gentle sadness amid
their pomp.  Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of every one of
them.  I have felt this influence earlier in some years than in others.
Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of July.  There
is no other feeling like that caused by this faint, doubtful, yet real
perception, or rather prophecy, of the year's decay, so deliciously sweet
and sad at the same time.

After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods,
and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path
which bends along its verge.  It was Margaret herself.  She had been
there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading; for she had a book in
her hand, with some strange title, which I did not understand, and have
forgotten.  She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just
giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited
Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred
precincts.  Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but
an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the
ground, and me sitting by her side.  He made some remark about the beauty
of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood.  Then
we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the
woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about
the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the
character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the
sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and
about other matters of high and low philosophy.  In the midst of our
talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank; and while the person
was still hidden among the trees, he called to Margaret, of whom he had
gotten a glimpse.  Then he emerged from the green shade, and, behold! it
was Mr. Emerson.  He appeared to have had a pleasant time; for he said
that there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to be heard in
the breezes.  It being now nearly six o'clock, we separated,--Margaret
and Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards mine. . . .

Last evening there was the most beautiful moonlight that ever hallowed
this earthly world; and when I went to bathe in the river, which was as
calm as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky.  But I had
rather be on earth than even in the seventh heaven, just now.


Wednesday, August 24th.--I left home at five o'clock this morning to
catch some fish for breakfast.  I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate
the golden apple which fell from it.  Methinks these early apples, which
come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are
almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards.  We have but
one such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance,
and probably will do so for at least a week to come.  Meantime other
trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I
taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I
feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence.  I
suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on the
ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the world's
first summer.  However, insects, at the worst, will hold a festival upon
them, so that they will not be thrown away, in the great scheme of
Nature.  Moreover, I have one advantage over the primeval Adam, inasmuch
as there is a chance of disposing of my superfluous fruits among people
who inhabit no Paradise of their own.

Passing a little way down along the river-side, I threw in my line, and
soon drew out one of the smallest possible of fishes.  It seemed to be a
pretty good morning for the angler,--an autumnal coolness in the air, a
clear sky, but with a fog across the lowlands and on the surface of the
river, which a gentle breeze sometimes condensed into wreaths.  At first
I could barely discern the opposite shore of the river; but, as the sun
arose, the vapors gradually dispersed, till only a warm, smoky tint was
left along the water's surface.  The farm-houses across the river made
their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard,
shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted
his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow.  Meantime, I
continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the little
fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake somewhat of
the character of their native element, and are but sluggish biters, still
I contrived to pull out not far from two dozen.  They were all bream, a
broad, flat, almost circular fish, shaped a good deal like a flounder,
but swimming on their edges, instead of on their sides.  As far as mere
pleasure is concerned, it is hardly worth while to fish in our river, it
is so much like angling in a mud-puddle; and one does not attach the idea
of freshness and purity to the fishes, as we do to those which inhabit
swift, transparent streams, or haunt the shores of the great briny deep.
Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line over the elder-bushes
that dip into the water, it seems as if we could catch nothing but frogs
and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them.  And even when a fish of
reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness about touching him.
As to our river, its character was admirably expressed last night by some
one who said "it was too lazy to keep itself clean."  I might write pages
and pages, and only obscure the impression which this brief sentence
conveys.  Nevertheless, we made bold to eat some of my fish for
breakfast, and found them very savory; and the rest shall meet with due
entertainment at dinner, together with some shell-beans, green corn, and
cucumbers from our garden; so this day's food comes directly and entirely
from beneficent Nature, without the intervention of any third person
between her and us.


Saturday, August 27th.--A peach-tree, which grows beside our house and
brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to
prop it up.  I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,--great,
round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree.  A
pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet fruit,
which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the peaches.
There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous abundance; it
is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving it a shake, with
the intention of bringing down a single one, when, behold, a dozen come
thumping about our ears.  But the idea of the infinite generosity and
exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well worth attaining; and I
never had it so vividly as now, when I find myself, with the few mouths
which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of the old clergyman's wealth of
fruits.  His children, his friends in the village, and the clerical
guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were all wont to eat and be
filled from these trees.  Now, all these hearty old people have passed
away, and in their stead is a solitary pair, whose appetites are more
than satisfied with the windfalls which the trees throw down at their
feet.  Howbeit, we shall have now and then a guest to keep our peaches
and pears from decaying.

G. B------, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm, called
on me last evening, and dined here to-day.  He has been cultivating
vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the market.  What
a singular mode of life for a man of education and refinement,--to spend
his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then to convey the products
of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public market, and there retail
them out,--a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of turnips, a squash, a dozen
ears of green corn!  Few men, without some eccentricity of character,
would have the moral strength to do this; and it is very striking to find
such strength combined with the utmost gentleness, and an uncommon
regularity of nature.  Occasionally he returns for a day or two to resume
his place among scholars and idle people, as, for instance, the present
week, when he has thrown aside his spade and hoe to attend the
Commencement at Cambridge.  He is a rare man,--a perfect original, yet
without any one salient point; a character to be felt and understood, but
almost impossible to describe: for, should you seize upon any
characteristic, it would inevitably be altered and distorted in the
process of writing it down.

Our few remaining days of summer have been latterly grievously darkened
with clouds.  To-day there has been an hour or two of hot sunshine; but
the sun rose amid cloud and mist, and before he could dry up the moisture
of last night's shower upon the trees and grass, the clouds have gathered
between him and us again.  This afternoon the thunder rumbles in the
distance, and I believe a few drops of rain have fallen; but the weight
of the shower has burst elsewhere, leaving us nothing but its sullen
gloom.  There is a muggy warmth in the atmosphere, which takes all the
spring and vivacity out of the mind and body.


Sunday, August 28th.--Still another rainy day,--the heaviest rain, I
believe, that has fallen since we came to Concord (not two months ago).
There never was a more sombre aspect of all external nature.  I gaze from
the open window of my study somewhat disconsolately, and observe the
great willow-tree which shades the house, and which has caught and
retained a whole cataract of rain among its leaves and boughs; and all
the fruit-trees, too, are dripping continually, even in the brief
intervals when the clouds give us a respite.  If shaken to bring down the
fruit, they will discharge a shower upon the head of him who stands
beneath.  The rain is warm, coming from some southern region; but the
willow attests that it is an autumnal spell of weather, by scattering
down no infrequent multitude of yellow leaves, which rest upon the
sloping roof of the house, and strew the gravel-path and the grass.  The
other trees do not yet shed their leaves, though in some of them a
lighter tint of verdure, tending towards yellow, is perceptible.  All day
long we hear the water drip, drip, dripping, splash, splash, splashing,
from the eaves, and babbling and foaming into the tubs which have been
set out to receive it.  The old unpainted shingles and boards of the
mansion and out-houses are black with the moisture which they have
imbibed.  Looking at the river, we perceive that its usually smooth and
mirrored surface is blurred by the infinity of rain-drops; the whole
landscape--grass, trees, and houses--has a completely water-soaked
aspect, as if the earth were wet through.  The wooded hill, about a mile
distant, whither we went to gather whortleberries, has a mist upon its
summit, as if the demon of the rain were enthroned there; and if we look
to the sky, it seems as if all the water that had been poured down upon
us were as nothing to what is to come.  Once in a while, indeed, there is
a gleam of sky along the horizon, or a half-cheerful, half-sullen
lighting up of the atmosphere; the rain-drops cease to patter down,
except when the trees shake off a gentle shower; but soon we hear the
broad, quiet, slow, and sure recommencement of the rain.  The river, if I
mistake not, has risen considerably during the day, and its current will
acquire some degree of energy.

In this sombre weather, when some mortals almost forget that there ever
was any golden sunshine, or ever will be any hereafter, others seem
absolutely to radiate it from their own hearts and minds.  The gloom
cannot pervade them; they conquer it, and drive it quite out of their
sphere, and create a moral rainbow of hope upon the blackest cloud.  As
for myself, I am little other than a cloud at such seasons, but such
persons contrive to make me a sunny one, shining all through me.  And
thus, even without the support of a stated occupation, I survive these
sullen days and am happy.

This morning we read the Sermon on the Mount.  In the course of the
forenoon, the rain abated for a season, and I went out and gathered some
corn and summer-squashes, and picked up the windfalls of apples and pears
and peaches.  Wet, wet, wet,--everything was wet; the blades of the
corn-stalks moistened me; the wet grass soaked my boots quite through;
the trees threw their reserved showers upon my head; and soon the
remorseless rain began anew, and drove me into the house.  When shall we
be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods,
and gather more cardinals along the river's margin?  The track along
which we trod is probably under water now.  How inhospitable Nature is
during a rain!  In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some
degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot come;
but she provides no shelter against her storms.  It makes one shiver to
think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks, those
overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry
afternoons.  And what becomes of the birds in such a soaking rain as
this?  Is hope and an instinctive faith so mixed up with their nature
that they can be cheered by the thought that the sunshine will return?
or do they think, as I almost do, that there is to be no sunshine any
more?  Very disconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when
a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems
hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain.  I, likewise, am
greedy of the summer days for my own sake; the life of man does not
contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.


Tuesday, August 30th.--I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,
that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and
brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out
of Paradise.  By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise?  If so, how
comfortless must Eve's bower have been! and what a wretched and rheumatic
time must they have had on their bed of wet roses!  It makes me shiver to
think of it.  Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday
morning, and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over
the hill, and had gone forth to fish.  How instantaneously did all
dreariness and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile
of the beneficent sun!  This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a
shadow, and that cheerfulness is the real truth.  It requires many
clouds, long brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine
always suffices to cheer up the landscape.  The banks of the river
actually laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself
was alive and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept
away many wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and
all such trumpery.  These matters came floating downwards, whirling round
and round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and
many of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the
Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea.  The spots where I stood
to fish, on my preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops of
many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the
stream.  Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.

There was a northwest-wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the
remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was
continually blowing them across the sun.  For the most part, they were
gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to
make me dread a return of sulky weather.  Then would come the burst of
sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an
impossibility. . . .

In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. ------.  He is a good
sort of humdrum parson enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of
manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in
the world.  Mr. ------, however, is probably one of the best and most
useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his
profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own
usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore
he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years
ago.

After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down
the avenue; and soon there appeared an elderly woman,--a homely, decent
old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript
book under her arm.  The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil
across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view
she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and
somewhat of a wild and wandering expression.  She had a singular gait,
reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the path
to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether she went
straight or crooked.  Such were my observations as she approached through
the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue, until, reaching the
door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of the house.  Her
manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old woman was a
widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son, and was now
utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means of support.
Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of people who had
bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their several donations,--
none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.  Here is a strange
life, and a character fit for romance and poetry.  All the early part of
her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood, were spent in the quiet
of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children, and the lifelong
gossiping acquaintances that some women always create about them.  But in
her decline she has wandered away from all these, and from her native
country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of the homeliness
and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a wife and mother,
and has had a roof of her own above her head,--and, with all this, a
wildness proper to her present life.  I have a liking for vagrants of all
sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to a wandering beggar,
when I had anything in my own pocket.  There is so much wretchedness in
the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to
need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to
ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by
which we purchase it.  It is desirable, I think, that such persons should
be permitted to roam through our land of plenty, scattering the seeds of
tenderness and charity, as birds of passage bear the seeds of precious
plants from land to land, without even dreaming of the office which they
perform.


Thursday, September 1st.--Mr. Thoreau dined with us yesterday. . . . He
is a keen and delicate observer of nature,--a genuine observer,--which, I
suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and
Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child,
and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness.  He is
familiar with beast, fish, fowl, and reptile, and has strange stories to
tell of adventures and friendly passages with these lower brethren of
mortality.  Herb and flower, likewise, wherever they grow, whether in
garden or wildwood, are his familiar friends.  He is also on intimate
terms with the clouds, and can tell the portents of storms.  It is a
characteristic trait, that he has a great regard for the memory of the
Indian tribes, whose wild life would have suited him so well; and,
strange to say, he seldom walks over a ploughed field without picking up
an arrow-point, spearhead, or other relic of the red man, as if their
spirits willed him to be the inheritor of their simple wealth.

With all this he has more than a tincture of literature,--a deep and true
taste for poetry, especially for the elder poets, and he is a good
writer,--at least he has written a good article, a rambling disquisition
on Natural History, in the last Dial, which, he says, was chiefly made up
from journals of his own observations.  Methinks this article gives a
very fair image of his mind and character,--so true, innate, and literal
in observation, yet giving the spirit as well as letter of what he sees,
even as a lake reflects its wooded banks, showing every leaf, yet giving
the wild beauty of the whole scene.  Then there are in the article
passages of cloudy and dreamy metaphysics, and also passages where his
thoughts seem to measure and attune themselves into spontaneous verse, as
they rightfully may, since there is real poetry in them.  There is a
basis of good sense and of moral truth, too, throughout the article,
which also is a reflection of his character; for he is not unwise to
think and feel, and I find him a healthy and wholesome man to know.

After dinner (at which we cut the first watermelon and muskmelon that our
garden has grown), Mr. Thoreau and I walked up the bank of the river, and
at a certain point he shouted for his boat.  Forthwith a young man
paddled it across, and Mr. Thoreau and I voyaged farther up the stream,
which soon became more beautiful than any picture, with its dark and
quiet sheet of water, half shaded, half sunny, between high and wooded
banks.  The late rains have swollen the stream so much that many trees
are standing up to their knees, as it were, in the water, and boughs,
which lately swung high in air, now dip and drink deep of the passing
wave.  As to the poor cardinals which glowed upon the bank a few days
since, I could see only a few of their scarlet hats, peeping above the
tide.  Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two paddles
or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to require no
physical effort to guide it.  He said that, when some Indians visited
Concord a few years ago, he found that he had acquired, without a
teacher, their precise method of propelling and steering a canoe.
Nevertheless he was desirous of selling the boat of which he was so fit a
pilot, and which was built by his own hands; so I agreed to take it, and
accordingly became possessor of the Musketaquid.  I wish I could acquire
the aquatic skill of the original owner.


September 2d.--Yesterday afternoon Mr. Thoreau arrived with the boat.
The adjacent meadow being overflowed by the rise of the stream, he had
rowed directly to the foot of the orchard, and landed at the bars, after
floating over forty or fifty yards of water where people were lately
making hay.  I entered the boat with him, in order to have the benefit of
a lesson in rowing and paddling. . . . I managed, indeed, to propel the
boat by rowing with two oars, but the use of the single paddle is quite
beyond my present skill.  Mr. Thoreau had assured me that it was only
necessary to will the boat to go in any particular direction, and she
would immediately take that course, as if imbued with the spirit of the
steersman.  It may be so with him, but it is certainly not so with me.
The boat seemed to be bewitched, and turned its head to every point of
the compass except the right one.  He then took the paddle himself, and,
though I could observe nothing peculiar in his management of it, the
Musketaquid immediately became as docile as a trained steed.  I suspect
that she has not yet transferred her affections from her old master to
her new one.  By and by, when we are better acquainted, she will grow
more tractable. . . . We propose to change her name from Musketaquid
(the Indian name of the Concord River, meaning the river of meadows) to
the Pond-Lily, which will be very beautiful and appropriate, as, during
the summer season, she will bring home many a cargo of pond-lilies from
along the river's weedy shore.  It is not very likely that I shall make
such long voyages in her as Mr. Thoreau has made.  He once followed our
river down to the Merrimack, and thence, I believe, to Newburyport in
this little craft.

In the evening, ---- ------ called to see us, wishing to talk with me
about a Boston periodical, of which he had heard that I was to be editor,
and to which he desired to contribute.  He is an odd and clever young
man, with nothing very peculiar about him,--some originality and
self-inspiration in his character, but none, or, very little, in his
intellect.  Nevertheless, the lad himself seems to feel as if he were a
genius.  I like him well enough, however; but, after all, these originals
in a small way, after one has seen a few of them, become more dull and
commonplace than even those who keep the ordinary pathway of life.  They
have a rule and a routine, which they follow with as little variety as
other people do their rule and routine; and when once we have fathomed
their mystery, nothing can be more wearisome.  An innate perception and
reflection of truth give the only sort of originality that does not
finally grow intolerable.


September 4th.--I made a voyage in the Pond-Lily all by myself yesterday
morning, and was much encouraged by my success in causing the boat to go
whither I would.  I have always liked to be afloat, but I think I have
never adequately conceived of the enjoyment till now, when I begin to
feel a power over that which supports me.  I suppose I must have felt
something like this sense of triumph when I first learned to swim; but I
have forgotten it.  O that I could run wild!--that is, that I could put
myself into a true relation with Nature, and be on friendly terms with
all congenial elements.

We had a thunder-storm last evening; and to-day has been a cool, breezy
autumnal day, such as my soul and body love.


September 18th.--How the summer-time flits away, even while it seems to
be loitering onward, arm in arm with autumn!  Of late I have walked but
little over the hills and through the woods, my leisure being chiefly
occupied with my boat, which I have now learned to manage with tolerable
skill.  Yesterday afternoon I made a voyage alone up the North Branch of
Concord River.  There was a strong west-wind blowing dead against me,
which, together with the current, increased by the height of the water,
made the first part of the passage pretty toilsome.  The black river was
all dimpled over with little eddies and whirlpools; and the breeze,
moreover, caused the billows to beat against the bow of the boat, with a
sound like the flapping of a bird's wing.  The water-weeds, where they
were discernible through the tawny water, were straight outstretched by
the force of the current, looking as if they were forced to hold on to
their roots with all their might.  If for a moment I desisted from
paddling, the head of the boat was swept round by the combined might of
wind and tide.  However, I toiled onward stoutly, and, entering the North
Branch, soon found myself floating quietly along a tranquil stream,
sheltered from the breeze by the woods and a lofty hill.  The current,
likewise, lingered along so gently that it was merely a pleasure to
propel the boat against it.  I never could have conceived that there was
so beautiful a river-scene in Concord as this of the North Branch.  The
stream flows through the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood,
which, as if but half satisfied with its presence, calm, gentle, and
unobtrusive as it is, seems to crowd upon it, and barely to allow it
passage; for the trees are rooted on the very verge of the water, and dip
their pendent branches into it.  On one side there is a high bank,
forming the side of a hill, the Indian name of which I have forgotten,
though Mr. Thoreau told it to me; and here, in some instances, the trees
stand leaning over the river, stretching out their arms as if about to
plunge in headlong.  On the other side, the bank is almost on a level
with the water; and there the quiet congregation of trees stood with feet
in the flood, and fringed with foliage down to its very surface.  Vines
here and there twine themselves about bushes or aspens or alder-trees,
and hang their clusters (though scanty and infrequent this season) so
that I can reach them from my boat.  I scarcely remember a scene of more
complete and lovely seclusion than the passage of the river through this
wood.  Even an Indian canoe, in olden times, could not have floated
onward in deeper solitude than my boat.  I have never elsewhere had such
an opportunity to observe how much more beautiful reflection is than what
we call reality.  The sky, and the clustering foliage on either hand, and
the effect of sunlight as it found its way through the shade, giving
lightsome hues in contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tints,
--all these seemed unsurpassably beautiful when beheld in upper air.  But
on gazing downward, there they were, the same even to the minutest
particular, yet arrayed in ideal beauty, which satisfied the spirit
incomparably more than the actual scene.  I am half convinced that the
reflection is indeed the reality, the real thing which Nature imperfectly
images to our grosser sense.  At any rate, the disembodied shadow is
nearest to the soul.

There were many tokens of autumn in this beautiful picture.  Two or three
of the trees were actually dressed in their coats of many colors,--the
real scarlet and gold which they wear before they put on mourning.  These
stood on low, marshy spots, where a frost has probably touched them
already.  Others were of a light, fresh green, resembling the hues of
spring, though this, likewise, is a token of decay.  The great mass of
the foliage, however, appears unchanged; but ever and anon down came a
yellow leaf, half flitting upon the air, half falling through it, and
finally settling upon the water.  A multitude of these were floating here
and there along the river, many of them curling upward, so as to form
little boats, fit for fairies to voyage in.  They looked strangely
pretty, with yet a melancholy prettiness, as they floated along.  The
general aspect of the river, however, differed but little from that of
summer,--at least the difference defies expression.  It is more in the
character of the rich yellow sunlight than in aught else.  The water of
the stream has now a thrill of autumnal coolness; yet whenever a broad
gleam fell across it, through an interstice of the foliage, multitudes of
insects were darting to and fro upon its surface.  The sunshine, thus
falling across the dark river, has a most beautiful effect.  It burnishes
it, as it were, and yet leaves it as dark as ever.

On my return, I suffered the boat to float almost of its own will down
the stream, and caught fish enough for this morning's breakfast.  But,
partly from a qualm of conscience, I finally put them all into the water
again, and saw them swim away as if nothing had happened.


Monday, October 10th.--A long while, indeed, since my last date.  But the
weather has been generally sunny and pleasant, though often very cold;
and I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by
staying in the house.  So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in
the open air.  My chief amusement has been boating up and down the river.
A week or two ago (September 27 and 28) I went on a pedestrian excursion
with Mr. Emerson, and was gone two days and one night, it being the first
and only night that I have spent away from home.  We were that night at
the village of Harvard, and the next morning walked three miles farther,
to the Shaker village, where we breakfasted.  Mr. Emerson had a
theological discussion with two of the Shaker brethren; but the
particulars of it have faded from my memory; and all the other adventures
of the tour have now so lost their freshness that I cannot adequately
recall them.  Wherefore let them rest untold.  I recollect nothing so
well as the aspect of some fringed gentians, which we saw growing by the
roadside, and which were so beautiful that I longed to turn back and
pluck them.  After an arduous journey, we arrived safe home in the
afternoon of the second day,--the first time that I ever came home in my
life; for I never had a home before.  On Saturday of the same week, my
friend D. R------ came to see us, and stayed till Tuesday morning.  On
Wednesday there was a cattleshow in the village, of which I would give a
description, if it had possessed any picturesque points.  The foregoing
are the chief outward events of our life.

In the mean time autumn has been advancing, and is said to be a month
earlier than usual.  We had frosts, sufficient to kill the bean and
squash vines, more than a fortnight ago; but there has since been some of
the most delicious Indian-summer weather that I ever experienced,--mild,
sweet, perfect days, in which the warm sunshine seemed to embrace the
earth and all earth's children with love and tenderness.  Generally,
however, the bright days have been vexed with winds from the northwest,
somewhat too keen and high for comfort.  These winds have strewn our
avenue with withered leaves, although the trees still retain some density
of foliage, which is now imbrowned or otherwise variegated by autumn.
Our apples, too, have been falling, falling, falling; and we have picked
the fairest of them from the dewy grass, and put them in our store-room
and elsewhere.  On Thursday, John Flint began to gather those which
remained on the trees; and I suppose they will amount to nearly twenty
barrels, or perhaps more.  As usual when I have anything to sell, apples
are very low indeed in price, and will not fetch me more than a dollar a
barrel.  I have sold my share of the potato-field for twenty dollars and
ten bushels of potatoes for my own use.  This may suffice for the
economical history of our recent life.


12 o'clock, M.--Just now I heard a sharp tapping at the window of my
study, and, looking up from my book (a volume of Rabelais), behold! the
head of a little bird, who seemed to demand admittance!  He was probably
attempting to get a fly, which was on the pane of glass against which he
rapped; and on my first motion the feathered visitor took wing.  This
incident had a curious effect on me.  It impressed me as if the bird had
been a spiritual visitant, so strange was it that this little wild thing
should seem to ask our hospitality.


November 8th.--I am sorry that our journal has fallen so into neglect;
but I see no chance of amendment.  All my scribbling propensities will be
far more than gratified in writing nonsense for the press; so that any
gratuitous labor of the pen becomes peculiarly distasteful.  Since the
last date, we have paid a visit of nine days to Boston and Salem, whence
we returned a week ago yesterday.  Thus we lost above a week of delicious
autumnal weather, which should have been spent in the woods or upon the
river.  Ever since our return, however, until to-day, there has been a
succession of genuine Indian-summer days, with gentle winds or none at
all, and a misty atmosphere, which idealizes all nature, and a mild,
beneficent sunshine, inviting one to lie down in a nook and forget all
earthly care.  To-day the sky is dark and lowering, and occasionally lets
fall a few sullen tears.  I suppose we must bid farewell to Indian summer
now, and expect no more love and tenderness from Mother Nature till next
spring be well advanced.  She has already made herself as unlovely in
outward aspect as can well be.  We took a walk to Sleepy Hollow
yesterday, and beheld scarcely a green thing, except the everlasting
verdure of the family of pines, which, indeed, are trees to thank God for
at this season.  A range of young birches had retained a pretty liberal
coloring of yellow or tawny leaves, which became very cheerful in the
sunshine.  There were one or two oak-trees whose foliage still retained a
deep, dusky red, which looked rich and warm; but most of the oaks had
reached the last stage of autumnal decay,--the dusky brown hue.  Millions
of their leaves strew the woods and rustle underneath the foot; but
enough remain upon the boughs to make a melancholy harping when the wind
sweeps over them.  We found some fringed gentians in the meadow, most of
them blighted and withered; but a few were quite perfect.  The other day,
since our return from Salem, I found a violet; yet it was so cold that
day, that a large pool of water, under the shadow of some trees, had
remained frozen from morning till afternoon.  The ice was so thick as not
to be broken by some sticks and small stones which I threw upon it.  But
ice and snow too will soon be no extraordinary matters with us.

During the last week we have had three stoves put up, and henceforth no
light of a cheerful fire will gladden us at eventide.  Stoves are
detestable in every respect, except that they keep us perfectly
comfortable.


Thursday, November 24th.--This is Thanksgiving Day, a good old festival,
and we have kept it with our hearts, and, besides, have made good cheer
upon our turkey and pudding, and pies and custards, although none sat at
our board but our two selves.  There was a new and livelier sense, I
think, that we have at last found a home, and that a new family has been
gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day.  There have been many bright
cold days latterly,--so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to
keep one's self warm a-walking.  Day before yesterday I saw a party of
boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring meadow.
Running water has not yet frozen.  Vegetation has quite come to a stand,
except in a few sheltered spots.  In a deep ditch we found a tall plant
of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as if it must have
grown within the last few weeks.  We wander among the wood-paths, which
are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons, the trees looking
rich and warm,--such of them, I mean, as have retained their russet
leaves; and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or heaped
plentifully in some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a
charm.  To-day the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to
snow and sleet; and now the landscape is as dreary as can well be
imagined,--white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass
everywhere peeping out.  The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself
sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter's day.


Friday, March 31st, 1843.--The first month of spring is already gone; and
still the snow lies deep on hill and valley, and the river is still
frozen from bank to bank, although a late rain has caused pools of water
to stand on the surface of the ice, and the meadows are overflowed into
broad lakes.  Such a protracted winter has not been known for twenty
years, at least.  I have almost forgotten the wood-paths and shady places
which I used to know so well last summer; and my views are so much
confined to the interior of our mansion, that sometimes, looking out of
the window, I am surprised to catch a glimpse of houses, at no great
distance, which had quite passed out of my recollection.  From present
appearances, another month may scarcely suffice to wash away all the snow
from the open country; and in the woods and hollows it may linger yet
longer.  The winter will not have been a day less than five months long;
and it would not be unfair to call it seven.  A great space, indeed, to
miss the smile of Nature, in a single year of human life.  Even out of
the midst of happiness I have sometimes sighed and groaned; for I love
the sunshine and the green woods, and the sparkling blue water; and it
seems as if the picture of our inward bliss should be set in a beautiful
frame of outward nature. . . . As to the daily course of our life, I
have written with pretty commendable diligence, averaging from two to
four hours a day; and the result is seen in various magazines.  I might
have written more, if it had seemed worth while; but I was content to
earn only so much gold as might suffice for our immediate wants, having
prospect of official station and emolument which would do away with the
necessity of writing for bread.  Those prospects have not yet had their
fulfilment; and we are well content to wait, because an office would
inevitably remove us from our present happy home,--at least from an
outward home; for there is an inner one that will accompany us wherever
we go.  Meantime, the magazine people do not pay their debts; so that we
taste some of the inconveniences of poverty.  It is an annoyance, not a
trouble.

Every day, I trudge through snow and slosh to the village, look into the
post-office, and spend an hour at the reading-room; and then return home,
generally without having spoken a word to a human being. . . . In the
way of exercise I saw and split wood, and, physically, I never was in a
better condition than now.  This is chiefly owing, doubtless, to a
satisfied heart, in aid of which comes the exercise above mentioned, and
about a fair proportion of intellectual labor.

On the 9th of this mouth, we left home again on a visit to Boston and
Salem.  I alone went to Salem, where I resumed all my bachelor habits for
nearly a fortnight, leading the same life in which ten years of my youth
flitted away like a dream.  But how much changed was I!  At last I had
caught hold of a reality which never could be taken from me.  It was good
thus to get apart from my happiness, for the sake of contemplating it.
On the 21st, I returned to Boston, and went out to Cambridge to dine with
Longfellow, whom I had not seen since his return from Europe.  The next
day we came back to our old house, which had been deserted all this time;
for our servant had gone with us to Boston.


Friday, April 7th.--My wife has gone to Boston to see her sister M------,
who is to be married in two or three weeks, and then immediately to visit
Europe for six months. . . . I betook myself to sawing and splitting
wood; there being an inward unquietness which demanded active exercise,
and I sawed, I think, more briskly than ever before.  When I re-entered
the house, it was with somewhat of a desolate feeling; yet not without an
intermingled pleasure, as being the more conscious that all separation
was temporary, and scarcely real, even for the little time that it may
last.  After my solitary dinner, I lay down, with the Dial in my hand,
and attempted to sleep; but sleep would not come. . . . So I arose, and
began this record in the journal, almost at the commencement of which I
was interrupted by a visit from Mr. Thoreau, who came to return a book,
and to announce his purpose of going to reside at Staten Island, as
private tutor in the family of Mr. Emerson's brother.  We had some
conversation upon this subject, and upon the spiritual advantages of
change of place, and upon the Dial, and upon Mr. Alcott, and other
kindred or concatenated subjects.  I am glad, on Mr. Thoreau's own
account, that he is going away, as he is out of health, and may be
benefited by his removal; but, on my account, I should like to have him
remain here, he being one of the few persons, I think, with whom to hold
intercourse is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest-tree;
and, with all this wild freedom, there is high and classic cultivation in
him too. . . .

I had a purpose, if circumstances would permit, of passing the whole term
of my wife's absence without speaking a word to any human being; but now
my Pythagorean vow has been broken, within three or four hours after her
departure.


Saturday, April 8th.--After journalizing yesterday afternoon, I went out
and sawed and split wood till teatime, then studied German (translating
Lenore), with an occasional glance at a beautiful sunset, which I could
not enjoy sufficiently by myself to induce me to lay aside the book.
After lamplight, finished Lenore, and drowsed over Voltaire's Candide,
occasionally refreshing myself with a tune from Mr. Thoreau's
musical-box, which he had left in my keeping.  The evening was but a dull
one.

I retired soon after nine, and felt some apprehension that the old
Doctor's ghost would take this opportunity to visit me; but I rather
think his former visitations have not been intended for me, and that I am
not sufficiently spiritual for ghostly communication.  At all events, I
met with no disturbance of the kind, and slept soundly enough till six
o'clock or thereabouts.  The forenoon was spent with the pen in my hand,
and sometimes I had the glimmering of an idea, and endeavored to
materialize it in words; but on the whole my mind was idly vagrant, and
refused to work to any systematic purpose.  Between eleven and twelve I
went to the post-office, but found no letter; then spent above an hour
reading at the Athenaeum.  On my way home, I encountered Mr. Flint, for
the first time these many weeks, although he is our next neighbor in one
direction.  I inquired if he could sell us some potatoes, and he promised
to send half a bushel for trial.  Also, he encouraged me to hope that he
might buy a barrel of our apples.  After my encounter with Mr. Flint, I
returned to our lonely old abbey, opened the door without the usual
heart-spring, ascended to my study, and began to read a tale of Tieck.
Slow work, and dull work too!  Anon, Molly, the cook, rang the bell for
dinner,--a sumptuous banquet of stewed veal and macaroni, to which I sat
down in solitary state.  My appetite served me sufficiently to eat with,
but not for enjoyment.  Nothing has a zest in my present widowed state.
[Thus far I had written, when Mr. Emerson called.]  After dinner, I lay
down on the couch, with the Dial in my hand as a soporific, and had a
short nap; then began to journalize.

Mr. Emerson came, with a sunbeam in his face; and we had as good a talk
as I ever remember to have had with him.  He spoke of Margaret Fuller,
who, he says, has risen perceptibly into a higher state since their last
meeting.  [There rings the tea-bell.]  Then we discoursed of Ellery
Channing, a volume of whose poems is to be immediately published, with
revisions by Mr. Emerson himself and Mr. Sam G. Ward. . . . He calls
them "poetry for poets."  Next Mr. Thoreau was discussed, and his
approaching departure; in respect to which we agreed pretty well. . . .
We talked of Brook Farm, and the singular moral aspects which it
presents, and the great desirability that its progress and developments
should be observed and its history written; also of C. N------, who, it
appears, is passing through a new moral phasis.  He is silent,
inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except
a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into
permanent eclipse.  Various other matters were considered or glanced at,
and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave.  I
then went out to chop wood, my allotted space for which had been very
much abridged by his visit; but I was not sorry.  I went on with the
journal for a few minutes before tea, and have finished the present
record in the setting sunshine and gathering dusk. . . .


Salem.--. . . . Here I am, in my old chamber, where I produced those
stupendous works of fiction which have since impressed the universe with
wonderment and awe!  To this chamber, doubtless, in all succeeding ages,
pilgrims will come to pay their tribute of reverence;--they will put off
their shoes at the threshold for fear of desecrating the tattered old
carpets!  "There," they will exclaim, "is the very bed in which he
slumbered, and where he was visited by those ethereal visions which he
afterwards fixed forever in glowing words!  There is the wash-stand at
which this exalted personage cleansed himself from the stains of earth,
and rendered his outward man a fitting exponent of the pure soul within.
There, in its mahogany frame, is the dressing-glass, which often
reflected that noble brow, those hyacinthine locks, that mouth bright
with smiles or tremulous with feeling, that flashing or melting eye,
that--in short, every item of the magnanimous face of this unexampled
man.  There is the pine table,--there the old flag-bottomed chair on
which he sat, and at which he scribbled, during his agonies of
inspiration!  There is the old chest of drawers in which he kept what
shirts a poor author may be supposed to have possessed!  There is the
closet in which was reposited his threadbare suit of black!  There is the
worn-out shoe-brush with which this polished writer polished his boots.
There is--" but I believe, this will be pretty much all, so here I close
the catalogue. . . .

A cloudy veil stretches over the abyss of my nature.  I have, however, no
love of secrecy and darkness.  I am glad to think that God sees through
my heart, and, if any angel has power to penetrate into it, he is welcome
to know everything that is there.  Yes, and so may any mortal who is
capable of full sympathy, and therefore worthy to come into my depths.
But he must find his own way there.  I can neither guide nor enlighten
him.  It is this involuntary reserve, I suppose, that has given the
objectivity to my writings; and when people think that I am pouring
myself out in a tale or an essay, I am merely telling what is common to
human nature, not what is peculiar to myself.  I sympathize with them,
not they with me. . . .

I have recently been both lectured about and preached about here in my
native city; the preacher was Rev. Mr. Fox of Newburyport; but how he
contrived to put me into a sermon I know not.  I trust he took for his
text, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile."


Salem, March 12th.--. . . . That poor home! how desolate it is now!  Last
night, being awake, . . . . my thoughts travelled back to the lonely old
Manse; and it seemed as if I were wandering up stairs and down stairs all
by myself.  My fancy was almost afraid to be there alone.  I could see
every object in a dim, gray light,--our chamber, the study, all in
confusion; the parlor, with the fragments of that abortive breakfast on
the table, and the precious silver forks, and the old bronze image,
keeping its solitary stand upon the mantelpiece.  Then, methought, the
wretched Vigwiggie came, and jumped upon the window-sill, and clung there
with her fore paws, mewing dismally for admittance, which I could not
grant her, being there myself only in the spirit.  And then came the
ghost of the old Doctor, stalking through the gallery, and down the
staircase, and peeping into the parlor; and though I was wide awake, and
conscious of being so many miles from the spot, still it was quite awful
to think of the ghost having sole possession of our home; for I could not
quite separate myself from it, after all.  Somehow the Doctor and I
seemed to be there tete-a-tete. . . . I believe I did not have any
fantasies about the ghostly kitchen-maid; but I trust Mary left the
flat-irons within her reach, so that she may do all her ironing while we
are away, and never disturb us more at midnight.  I suppose she comes
thither to iron her shroud, and perhaps, likewise, to smooth the Doctor's
band.  Probably, during her lifetime, she allowed him to go to some
ordination or other grand clerical celebration with rumpled linen, and
ever since, and throughout all earthly futurity (at least, as long as the
house shall stand), she is doomed to exercise a nightly toil with a
spiritual flat-iron.  Poor sinner!--and doubtless Satan heats the irons
for her.  What nonsense is all this! but, really, it does make me shiver
to think of that poor home of ours.


March 16th.--. . . . As for this Mr. ------, I wish he would not be so
troublesome.  His scheme is well enough, and might possibly become
popular; but it has no peculiar advantages with reference to myself, nor
do the subjects of his proposed books particularly suit my fancy as
themes to write upon.  Somebody else will answer his purpose just as
well; and I would rather write books of my own imagining than be hired to
develop the ideas of an engraver; especially as the pecuniary prospect is
not better, nor so good, as it might be elsewhere.  I intend to adhere to
my former plan of writing one or two mythological story-books, to be
published under O'Sullivan's auspices in New York,---which is the only
place where books can be published with a chance of profit.  As a matter
of courtesy, I may call on Mr. ------, if I have time; but I do not
intend to be connected with this affair.


Sunday, April 9th.--. . . . After finishing my record in the journal, I
sat a long time in grandmother's chair, thinking of many things. . . .
My spirits were at a lower ebb than they ever descend to when I am not
alone; nevertheless, neither was I absolutely sad.  Many times I wound
and rewound Mr. Thoreau's little musical-box; but certainly its peculiar
sweetness had evaporated, and I am pretty sure that I should throw it out
of the window were I doomed to hear it long and often.  It has not an
infinite soul.  When it was almost as dark as the moonlight would let it
be, I lighted the lamp, and went on with Tieck's tale, slowly and
painfully, often wishing for help in my difficulties.  At last I
determined to learn a little about pronouns and verbs before proceeding
further, and so took up the phrase-book, with which I was commendably
busy, when, at about a quarter to nine, came a knock at my study door,
and, behold, there was Molly with a letter!  How she came by it I did not
ask, being content to suppose it was brought by a heavenly messenger.  I
had not expected a letter; and what a comfort it was to me in my
loneliness and sombreness!  I called Molly to take her note (enclosed),
which she received with a face of delight as broad and bright as the
kitchen fire.  Then I read, and re-read, and re-re-read, and quadruply,
quintuply, and sextuply re-read my epistle, until I had it all by heart,
and then continued to re-read it for the sake of the penmanship.  Then I
took up the phrase-book again; but could not study, and so bathed and
retired, it being now not far from ten o'clock.  I lay awake a good deal
in the night, but saw no ghost.

I arose about seven, and found that the upper part of my nose, and the
region round about, was grievously discolored; and at the angle of the
left eye there is a great spot of almost black purple, and a broad streak
of the same hue semicircling beneath either eye, while green, yellow, and
orange overspread the circumjacent country.  It looks not unlike a
gorgeous sunset, throwing its splendor over the heaven of my countenance.
It will behoove me to show myself as little as possible, else people will
think I have fought a pitched battle. . . . The Devil take the stick of
wood!  What had I done, that it should bemaul me so?  However, there is
no pain, though, I think, a very slight affection of the eyes.

This forenoon I began to write, and caught an idea by the skirts, which I
intend to hold fast, though it struggles to get free.  As it was not
ready to be put upon paper, however, I took up the Dial, and finished
reading the article on Mr. Alcott.  It is not very satisfactory, and it
has not taught me much.  Then I read Margaret's article on Canova, which
is good.  About this time the dinner-bell rang, and I went down without
much alacrity, though with a good appetite enough. . . . It was in the
angle of my right eye, not my left, that the blackest purple was
collected.  But they both look like the very Devil.

Half past five o'clock.--After writing the above, . . . . I again set to
work on Tieck's tale, and worried through several pages; and then, at
half past four, threw open one of the western windows of my study, and
sallied forth to take the sunshine.  I went down through the orchard to
the river-side.  The orchard-path is still deeply covered with snow; and
so is the whole visible universe, except streaks upon the hillsides, and
spots in the sunny hollows, where the brown earth peeps through.  The
river, which a few days ago was entirely imprisoned, has now broken its
fetters; but a tract of ice extended across from near the foot of the
monument to the abutment of the old bridge, and looked so solid that I
supposed it would yet remain for a day or two.  Large cakes and masses of
ice came floating down the current, which, though not very violent,
hurried along at a much swifter pace than the ordinary one of our
sluggish river-god.  These ice-masses, when they struck the barrier of
ice above mentioned, acted upon it like a battering-ram, and were
themselves forced high out of the water, or sometimes carried beneath the
main sheet of ice.  At last, down the stream came an immense mass of ice,
and, striking the barrier about at its centre, it gave way, and the whole
was swept onward together, leaving the river entirely free, with only
here and there a cake of ice floating quietly along.  The great
accumulation, in its downward course, hit against a tree that stood in
mid-current, and caused it to quiver like a reed; and it swept quite over
the shrubbery that bordered what, in summer-time, is the river's bank,
but which is now nearly the centre of the stream.  Our river in its
present state has quite a noble breadth.  The little hillock which formed
the abutment of the old bridge is now an island with its tuft of trees.
Along the hither shore a row of trees stand up to their knees, and the
smaller ones to their middles, in the water; and afar off, on the surface
of the stream, we see tufts of bushes emerging, thrusting up their heads,
as it were, to breathe.  The water comes over the stone-wall, and
encroaches several yards on the boundaries of our orchard.  [Here the
supper-bell rang.]  If our boat were in good order, I should now set
forth on voyages of discovery, and visit nooks on the borders of the
meadows, which by and by will be a mile or two from the water's edge.
But she is in very bad condition, full of water, and, doubtless, as leaky
as a sieve.

On coming from supper, I found that little Puss had established herself
in the study, probably with intent to pass the night here.  She now lies
on the footstool between my feet, purring most obstreperously.  The day
of my wife's departure, she came to me, talking with the greatest
earnestness; but whether it was to condole with me on my loss, or to
demand my redoubled care for herself, I could not well make out.  As Puss
now constitutes a third part of the family, this mention of her will not
appear amiss.  How Molly employs herself, I know not.  Once in a while, I
hear a door slam like a thunder-clap; but she never shows her face, nor
speaks a word, unless to announce a visitor or deliver a letter.  This
day, on my part, will have been spent without exchanging a syllable with
any human being, unless something unforeseen should yet call for the
exercise of speech before bedtime.


Monday, April 10th.--I sat till eight o'clock, meditating upon this world
and the next, . . . . and sometimes dimly shaping out scenes of a tale.
Then betook myself to the German phrase-book.  Ah! these are but dreary
evenings.  The lamp would not brighten my spirits, though it was duly
filled. . . . This forenoon was spent in scribbling, by no means to my
satisfaction, until past eleven, when I went to the village.  Nothing in
our box at the post-office.  I read during the customary hour, or more,
at the Athenaeum, and returned without saying a word to mortal.  I
gathered, from some conversation that I heard, that a son of Adam is to
be buried this afternoon from the meeting-house; but the name of the
deceased escaped me.  It is no great matter, so it be but written in the
Book of Life.

My variegated face looks somewhat more human to-day; though I was
unaffectedly ashamed to meet anybody's gaze, and therefore turned my back
or my shoulder as much as possible upon the world.  At dinner, behold an
immense joint of roast veal!  I would willingly have had some assistance
in the discussion of this great piece of calf.  I am ashamed to eat
alone; it becomes the mere gratification of animal appetite,--the tribute
which we are compelled to pay to our grosser nature; whereas in the
company of another it is refined and moralized and spiritualized; and
over our earthly victuals (or rather vittles, for the former is a very
foolish mode of spelling),--over our earthly vittles is diffused a sauce
of lofty and gentle thoughts, and tough meat is mollified with tender
feelings.  But oh! these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my
present experience.  When the company rose from table, they all, in my
single person, ascended to the study, and employed themselves in reading
the article on Oregon in the Democratic Review.  Then they plodded onward
in the rugged and bewildering depths of Tieck's tale until five o'clock,
when, with one accord, they went out to split wood.  This has been a
gray day, with now and then a sprinkling of snow-flakes through the
air. . . . To-day no more than yesterday have I spoken a word to
mortal. . . . It is now sunset, and I must meditate till dark.


April 11th.--I meditated accordingly, but without any very wonderful
result.  Then at eight o'clock bothered myself till after nine with this
eternal tale of Tieck.  The forenoon was spent in scribbling; but at
eleven o'clock my thoughts ceased to flow,--indeed, their current has
been wofully interrupted all along,--so I threw down my pen, and set out
on the daily journey to the village.  Horrible walking!  I wasted the
customary hour at the Athenaeum, and returned home, if home it may now be
called.  Till dinner-time I labored on Tieck's tale, and resumed that
agreeable employment after the banquet.

Just when I was on the point of choking with a huge German word, Molly
announced Mr. Thoreau.  He wished to take a row in the boat, for the last
time, perhaps, before he leaves Concord.  So we emptied the water out of
her, and set forth on our voyage.  She leaks, but not more than she did
in the autumn.  We rowed to the foot of the hill which borders the North
Branch, and there landed, and climbed the moist and snowy hillside for
the sake of the prospect.  Looking down the river, it might well have
been mistaken for an arm of the sea, so broad is now its swollen tide;
and I could have fancied that, beyond one other headland, the mighty
ocean would outspread itself before the eye.  On our return we boarded a
large cake of ice, which was floating down the river, and were borne by
it directly to our own landing-place, with the boat towing behind.

Parting with Mr. Thoreau, I spent half an hour in chopping wood, when
Molly informed me that Mr. Emerson wished to see me.  He had brought a
letter of Ellery Channing, written in a style of very pleasant humor.
This bein

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