have the story confirmed, said he: "Oh, the muskrats are the greatest fellows to gnaw their legs off. Why I caught one once that had just gnawed his third leg off, this being the third time he had been trapped; and he lay dead by the trap, for he couldn't run on one leg."
Such tragedies are enacted even in this sphere and along our peaceful streams, and dignify at least the hunter's trade. Only courage does anywhere prolong life, whether of man or beast.
When they are caught by the leg and cannot get into the water to drown themselves, they very frequently gnaw the limb off. They are commonly caught under water or close to the edge, and dive immediately with the trap and go to gnawing and are quackled and drowned in a moment, though under other circumstances they will live several minutes under water.
They prefer to gnaw off a fore leg to a hind leg, and do not gnaw off their tails. He says the wharf rats are very common on the river and will swim and cross it like a muskrat, and will gnaw their legs and even their tails off in the trap.
These would be times that tried men's souls, if men had souls to be tried; aye, and the souls of brutes, for they must have souls as well as teeth. Even the water-rats lead sleepless nights and live Achillean lives. There are the strong will and the endeavor. Man, even the hunter, naturally has sympathy with every brave effort, even in his game, to maintain that life it enjoys. The hunter regards with awe his game, and it becomes at last his medicine.[507] * * * * * Of Cadew or Case worms there are the Ruff-coats or Cockspurs, whose cases are rough and made of various materials, and the Piper Cadis or Straw-worm, made of reed or rush, and straight and smooth.
* * * * * Carlyle's works are not to be studied,—hardly re-read. Their first impression is the truest and the deepest. There is no reprint. If you look again, you will be disappointed and find nothing answering to the mood they have excited. They are true natural products in this respect.
All things are but once, and never repeated. The first faint blushes of the morning gilding the mountain-tops, with the pale phosphorus and saffron-colored clouds,—they verily transport us to the morning of creation; but what avails it to travel eastward, or look again there an hour hence. We should be as far in the day ourselves, mounting toward our meridian. There is no _double entendre_ for the alert reader; in fact the work was designed for such complete success that it serves but for a single occasion. It is the luxury of wealth and art when for every deed its own instrument is manufactured. The knife which sliced the bread of Jove ceased to be a knife when that service was rendered.
* * * * * For every inferior, earthly pleasure we forego, a superior, celestial one is substituted.
To purify our lives requires simply to weed out what is foul and noxious and the sound and innocent is supplied, as nature purifies the blood if we will but reject impurities.
Nature and human life are as various to our several experiences as our constitutions are various. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour,—aye, in all the worlds of the ages. What I have read of rhapsodists, of the primitive poets, Argonautic expeditions, the life of demigods and heroes, Eleusinian mysteries, etc., suggests nothing so ineffably grand and informing as this would be.
* * * * * The phœbe came into my house to find a place for its nest, flying through the windows.
* * * * * It was a bright thought, that of man's to have bells; no doubt the birds hear them with pleasure.
* * * * * To compete with the squirrels in the chestnut harvest, picking ofttimes the nuts that bear the mark of their teeth.
* * * * * I require of any lecturer that he will read me a more or less simple and sincere account of his own life, of what he has done and thought,—not so much what he has read or heard of other men's lives and actions, but some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land,—and if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me,—describing even his outward circumstances and what adventures he has had, as well as his thoughts and feelings about them. He who gives us only the results of other men's lives, though with brilliant temporary success, we may in some measure justly accuse of having defrauded us of our time. We want him to give us that which was most precious to him,—not his life's blood but even that for which his life's blood circulated, what he has got by living. If anything ever yielded him pure pleasure or instruction, let him communicate it. Let the money-getter tell us how much he loves wealth, and what means he takes to accumulate it. He must describe those facts which he knows and loves better than anybody else. He must not write on foreign missions. The mechanic will naturally lecture about his trade, the farmer about his farm, and every man about that which he, compared with other men, knows best. Yet incredible mistakes are made. I have heard an owl lecture with perverse show of learning upon the solar microscope, and chanticleer upon nebulous stars, when both ought to have been sound asleep, the one in a hollow tree, the other on his roost.
After I lectured here before, this winter, I heard that some of my townsmen had expected of me some account of my life at the pond. This I will endeavor to give to-night.
* * * * * I know a robust and hearty mother who thinks that her son, who died abroad, came to his end by living too low, as she had since learned that he drank only water. Men are not inclined to leave off hanging men to-day, though they will be to-morrow. I heard of a family in Concord this winter which would have starved, if it had not been for potatoes—and tea and coffee.
It has not been my design to live cheaply, but only to live as I could, not devoting much time to getting a living. I made the most of what means were already got.
* * * * * To determine the character of our life and how adequate it is to its occasion, just try it by any test, as for instance that this same sun is seen in Europe and in America at the same time, that these same stars are visible in twenty-four hours to two thirds the inhabitants of the globe, and who knows how many and various inhabitants of the universe.
What farmer in his field lives according even to this somewhat trivial material fact.
I just looked up at a fine twinkling star and thought that a voyager whom I know, now many days' sail from this coast, might possibly be looking up at that same star with me. The stars are the apexes of what triangles! There is always the possibility—the possibility, I say—of being _all_, or remaining a particle, in the universe.
* * * * * In these days and in this country, a few implements, as the axe, shovel, etc., and, to the studious, light and stationery and access to a few books, will rank next to necessaries, but can all be obtained at a very trifling cost. Under the head of clothing is to be ranked bedding, or night-clothes.
We are very anxious to keep the animal heat in us. What pains we take with our beds! robbing the nests of birds and their breasts, this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has a bed of leaves and grass at the end of its burrow.
* * * * * In the summer I caught fish occasionally in the pond, but since September have not missed them.
* * * * * In a man or his work, over all special excellence or failure, prevails the general authority or value.
* * * * * Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.
* * * * * All matter, indeed, is capable of entertaining thought.
* * * * * The complete subjugation of the body to the mind prophesies the sovereignty of the latter over the whole of nature. The instincts are to a certain extent a sort of independent nobility, of equal date with the mind, or crown,—ancient dukes and princes of the regal blood. They are perhaps the mind of our ancestors subsided in us, the experience of the race.
A small sum would really do much good, if the donor spent himself with it and did not merely relinquish it to some distant society whose managers do the good or the evil with it. How much might be done for this town with a hundred dollars! I could provide a select course of lectures for the summer or winter with that sum, which would be an incalculable benefit to every inhabitant. With a thousand dollars I could purchase for this town a more complete and select library than exists in the State out of Cambridge and Boston, perhaps a more available one than any. Men sit palsied and helpless by the side of their buried treasures.[508] After all those who do most good with money, do it with the least, because they can do better than to acquire it.
_March 13, 1846._ The song sparrow and blackbird heard to-day. The snow going off. The ice in the pond one foot thick.
* * * * * Men talk much of coöperation nowadays, of working together to some worthy end; but what little coöperation there is, is as if it were not, being a simple result of which the means are hidden, a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith everywhere. If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate thoroughly implies to get your living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one earning his means as he went, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket.
It was easy to see that they could not long be companions, or coöperate, since one would not operate at all. They would part company at the first and most interesting crisis in their adventures.
END OF VOLUME I The Riverside Press H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS FOOTNOTES [1] In many cases the punctuation seems to be absolutely without significance; as if the writer had simply fallen into the habit of dropping dashes in an absent-minded way as he passed along. The following examples (the longest an extreme case) will show what is meant:— "I heard from time to time—a new note."
"The _Equisetum sylvaticum_—there is now of a reddish cast."
"It is very difficult—to find a suitable place to camp near the road—affording—water—a good—prospect and retirement."
"Another alighted near—by—and a third a little further off."
[2] Under date of June 9, 1854, we find him writing: "I should like to know the birds of the woods better. What birds inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me." Even the glass that he finally bought was not an opera-glass, but a "spy-glass" (monocular) so called, and must have been of comparatively little help in the identification of woodland species.
[3] Once he saw it (August 3, 1858), and then it proved to be a Maryland yellow-throat. At other times it was almost certainly an oven-bird.
169.]
[14] [Later.] We must consider war and slavery, with many other institutions and even the best existing governments, notwithstanding their apparent advantages, as the abortive rudiments of nobler institutions such as distinguish man in his savage and half-civilized state.
p. 21] [17] [A fanciful derivation of the word "Saxons"?]
[31] ["Carlyleish" is written in the margin against this passage.]
[32] [The word seems to be a new one, but its meaning is clear.]
[41] [See _Week_, p. 95 (Riv. 118), where the passages referred to appear in translation.]
[43] [All but the last stanza, somewhat revised and without title, appears in _Excursions_, pp. 176, 177; Riv. 215, 216.]
in l. 3 is the only change.]
Riv. 147.]
[52] [This poem will be found in _Excursions, and Poems_, p.
417, under the title "Ding Dong," somewhat revised and without the last stanza.]
[72] [The original name of Woodstock, N. H.]
[79] [This comes at the end of the first book of Journal transcripts (1837-39) and follows immediately a bit of verse dated Oct. 16, 1838, which has been included in its proper chronological place.]
[84] [Plutarch's _Morals_, "Roman Questions," lxviii.]
[87] [A pencil interlineation in this paragraph is as follows:] The soldier is the degenerate hero, as the priest is the degenerate saint; and the soldier and the priest are related as the hero and [the] saint. The one's virtue is bravery, the other's bravery virtue. Mankind still pay to the soldier the honors due only to the hero. They delight to do him honor. He is adorned with silver and gold and the colors of the rainbow, invested with outward splendor; music is for him especially, and his life is a holiday.
Journal:] The coward substitutes for this thrilling sphere music a universal wail, for this melodious chant a nasal cant, and but whistles to keep his courage up. He blows a feeble blast of slender melody and can compel his neighborhood only into a partial concord with himself, because nature has but little sympathy with such a soul. Hence he hears no accordant note in the universe, and is a coward, or consciously outcast and deserted man. But the brave man, without drum or trumpet, compels concord everywhere by the universality and tunefulness of his soul.
The quotation is from Plutarch's _Morals_, "Of Superstition."]
Introduction_.]
[108] [The criticism was not transcribed here. The title was inserted doubtless as a memorandum and to record the date of its composition. See Week, p. 327; Riv. 405.]
37.]
this familiar school-boy amusement is slipped into one of the manuscript Journal volumes.]
[117] [See pp. 174 and 263.]
[121] [Stanzas 3, 2, and 5, in this order, with slight alterations, are printed in _Week_, p. 366 (Riv. 453), under the title of "The Poet's Delay."]
[127] [T. finally sold this boat to Hawthorne, who changed the name from Musketaquid to Pond-Lily; and later it passed into pp. 318-321, and Channing, p. 13.]
[133] [This was Thoreau's first journal, from which he made the transcripts which are now the only representatives of his early diarizing. See p. 188, where Journal of 396 pages ends.]
[135] [Wordsworth, incorrectly quoted. The line reads,— "Following his plough, along the mountain-side."]
35.]
[154] [See p. 104.]
[155] [See p. 106.]
[156] [See p. 106.]
[170] I have heard a strain of music issuing from a soldiers' camp in the dawn, which sounded like the morning hymn of creation. The birches rustling in the breeze and the slumberous breathing of the crickets seemed to hush their murmuring to attend to it. [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf of the Journal.]
[171] [_The Service_, p. 7. Mr. Sanborn, in a note to this passage, says, "The allusion here is to the extraordinary sight of the gravest citizens of Concord, in that summer [1840],...turning out to roll a huge ball, emblematic of the popular movement against President Van Buren, from the battle-ground of Concord to that of Bunker Hill, singing as they rolled:— 'It is the Ball a-rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.'"]
36.]
[192] [The last two sentences appear also in pencil on a fly-leaf, preceded by, "It sleeps securely within its camp, not even dreaming of a foe."]
volume.]
[199] [See above.]
[212] [See p. 180.]
[219] [See his sister's account of his last sickness in [225] [An interpretation of Emerson's poem. The numbers refer to the stanzas.]
[226] [The italics are Thoreau's.]
[231] [See p. 299.]
sparrow? The "hair-bird" of _Week_, p. 317 (Riv. 393), is called tree sparrow in the commonplace-book referred to on p.
438.]
gives both field sparrow and rush sparrow as its vernacular names.]
[242] [In _Excursions_, p. 135 (Riv. 165), these lines are printed as part of a poem beginning, "With frontier strength ye stand your ground." The poem appears also, in extended form, in _Week_, pp. 170-173; Riv. 212-215.]
[246] [This poem appears in _Week_, p. 50 (Riv. 62), with some variations and without title.]
[250] [See pp. 124 and 174.]
[260] [_Week_, p. 339; Riv. 419. The "double spruce" is now generally known as the black spruce. Thoreau makes it "single spruce" (_i. e._, white spruce) in the book, but the tree he was familiar with was the black. He confused these two species for a time, but eventually discovered his error.]
[291] [See p. 213 for the possible origin of this figure.]
[292] [On the back lining-page of the manuscript Journal volume which ends with this date are the following sentences in pencil: There is another young day let loose to roam the earth.
Happiness is very unprofitable stock.
The love which is preached nowadays is an ocean of new milk for a man to swim in. I hear no surf nor surge, but the winds coo over it.]
Biographical Sketch of Thoreau).]
[298] [This poem, with the four additional stanzas of the next date, appears in the _Week_, pp. 313, 314 (Riv. 388, 389) under the title of "The Inward Morning." The second stanza is there omitted and there are other alterations.]
[300] [See p. 347.]
[304] [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf of the Journal:] A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
[306] [See p. 244.]
[333] [It was about a year after the date of this entry that Richard F. Fuller made Thoreau a present of a music-box (see which a few months later, on departing for Staten Island, he lent to Hawthorne (_American Note-Books_, Riv. pp. 333, 338).]
[337] [Thoreau's brother John died Jan. 11, 1842.]
[338] [Two lines missing from the manuscript here.]
[343] [At the head of this paragraph appears the following in pencil: What has music to do with the lives of the Great Composers? It is the great composer who is not yet dead whose life should be written. Shall we presume to write such a history as the former while the winds blow?]
106, 107.]
[357] Set the red hen, Sunday, March 21st [=20th]. [This memorandum is written in the margin. It is pretty good proof that by now we have come to the original Journal. Just where the transcripts end, however, it seems to be impossible to determine.]
[372] [In _Excursions_, p. 110 (Riv. 136), what appears to be the same bird is described, and is called the fish hawk.]
[377] [On the margin of this page appears the memorandum: "Set the gray hen April 1st."]
[385] [Plainly "neat" in Journal, though _Walden_ has "great."]
[397] [Eight lines, somewhat altered, _Week_, pp. 407, 408; Riv. 503.]
[399] [By Eliot Warburton, London, 1844, and New York, 1845.]