bank, now from that, with a pole, the two inebriates roused themselves betimes. For in spite of their low estate they seemed to have all their wits as much about them as ever, aye, and all the self-respect they ever had. And the Dutchman gave wise directions to the steerer, which were not heeded. Suddenly rousing himself up where the sharpest-eyed might be bewildered in the darkness, he leaned over the side of the boat and pointed straight down into the creek, averring that that identical hole was a first-rate place for eels. And again he roused himself at the right time and declared what luck he had once had with his pots (not his cups) in another place, which we were floating over in the dark. At last he suddenly stepped on to another boat which was moored to the shore, with a divine ease and sureness, saying, “Well, good-night, take care of yourselves, I can’t be with you any longer.” He was one of the few remarkable men whom I have met. I have been impressed by one or two men in their cups. There was really a divinity stirred within them, so that in their case I have reverenced the drunken, as savages the insane, man. So stupid that he could never be intoxicated. When I said, “You have had a hard time of it to-day,” he answered with indescribable good humor out of the very midst of his debauch, with watery eyes, “Well, it doesn’t happen every day.” It was happening then.[44] He had taken me aboard on his back, the boat lying a rod from the shore, before I knew his condition. In the darkness our skipper steered with a pole on the bottom, for an oysterman knows the bottom of his bay as well as the shores, and can tell where he is by the soundings.[45] * * * * * There was a glorious lurid sunset to-night, accompanied with many sombre clouds, and when I looked into the west with my head turned, the grass had the same fresh green, and the distant herbage and foliage in the horizon the same bark blue, and the clouds and sky the same bright colors beautifully mingled and dissolving into one another, that I have seen in pictures of tropical landscapes and skies. Pale saffron skies with faint fishes of rosy clouds dissolving in them. A blood-stained sky. I regretted that I had an impatient companion. What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?
I met with a man on the beach who told me that when he wanted to jump over a brook he held up one leg a certain height, and then, if a line from his eye through his toe touched the opposite bank, he knew that he could jump it. I asked him how he knew when he held his leg at the right angle, and he said he knew the hitch very well. An Irishman told me that he held up one leg and if he could bring his toe in a range with his eye and the opposite bank he knew that he could jump it. Why, I told him, I can blot out a star with my toe, but I would not engage to jump the distance. It then appeared that he knew when he had got his leg at the right height by a certain hitch there was in it. I suggested that he should connect his two ankles with a string.[46] * * * * * I knew a clergyman who, when any person died, was wont to speak of that portion of mankind who survived as living monuments of God’s mercy. A negative kind of life to live!
* * * * * I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do. Concord is the oldest inland town in New England, perhaps in the States, and the walker is peculiarly favored here. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. First along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the woodside. Such solitude! From a hundred hills I can see civilization and abodes of man afar. These farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks.[47] * * * * * As I was going by with a creaking wheelbarrow, one of my neighbors, who heard the music, ran out with his grease-pot and brush and greased the wheels.
That is a peculiar season when about the middle of August the farmers are getting their meadow-hay. If you sail up the river, you will see them in all meadows, raking hay and loading it on to carts, great towering [?] teams, under which the oxen stand like beetles, chewing the cud, waiting for men to put the meadow on. With the heaviest load they dash aside to crop some more savory grass,—the half-broken steers.
* * * * * There was reason enough for the first settler’s selecting the elm out of all the trees of the forest with which to ornament his villages. It is beautiful alike by sunlight and moonlight, and the most beautiful specimens are not the largest. I have seen some only twenty-five or thirty years old, more graceful and healthy, I think, than any others.
It is almost become a villageous tree,—like martins and bluebirds.
The high blueberry has the wildest flavor of any of the huckleberry tribe. It is a little mithridatic. It is like eating a poisonous berry which your nature makes harmless. I derive the same pleasure as if I were eating dog-berries, nightshade, and wild parsnip with impunity.
Man and his affairs,—Church and State and school, trade and commerce and agriculture,—Politics,—for that is the word for them all here to-day,—I am pleased to see how little space it occupies in the landscape. It is but a narrow field. That still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller[48] [Two pages missing.]
And once again, When I went a-maying, And once or twice more I had seen thee before, For there grow the mayflower (_Epigæa repens_) And the mountain cranberry And the screech owl _strepens_.
O whither dost thou go?
Which way dost thou flow?
Thou art the way.
Thou art a road Which Dante never trode.
Not many they be Who enter therein, Only the guests of the Irishman Quin.[49] There was a cross-eyed fellow used to help me survey,—he was my stake-driver,—and all he said was, at every stake he drove, “There, I shouldn’t like to undertake to pull _that_ up with my teeth.”
It sticks in my _crop_. That’s a good phrase. Many things stick there.
The man of wild habits, Partridges and rabbits, Who has no cares Only to set snares, Who liv’st all alone, Close to the bone, And where life is sweetest Constantly eatest.
Where they once dug for money, But never found “ony.”
To market fares With early apples and pears.
When the spring stirs my blood With the instinct to travel, I can get enough gravel On the Old Marlborough Road.
If you’ll leave your abode With your fancy unfurled, You may go round the world By the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it, For nobody wears it.
It is a living way, As the Christians say.
What is it, what is it, But a direction out there And the bare possibility Of going somewhere?
Great guide-_boards_ of stone, But travellers none.
It is worth going there to see Where you might be.
They’re a great endeavor To be something for ever.
They are a monument to somebody, To some selectman Who thought of the plan.
What king Did the thing, I am still wondering.
Cenotaphs of the towns Named on their crowns; Huge as Stonehenge; Set up how or when, By what selectmen?
Gourgas or Lee, Clark or Darby?
Blank tablets of stone, Where a traveller might groan, And in one sentence Grave all that is known; Which another might read, In his extreme need.
I know two or three Sentences, _i. e._, That might there be.
Literature that might stand All over the land.
Which a man might remember Till after December, And read again in the spring, After the thawing.[50] Old meeting-house bell, I love thy music well.
It peals through the air, Sweetly full and fair, As in the early times, When I listened to its chimes.
I walk over the hills, to compare _great_ things with _small_, as through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon looking through a gap in the wood, as through the frame of a picture, to a more distant wood or hillside, painted with several more coats of air. It is a cheap but pleasant effect. To a landscape in picture, glassed with air.
What is a horizon without mountains?
* * * * * A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It has new life and motion. It is intermediate between land and sky. On land, only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is _rippled_ by the wind.
I see the breeze dash across it in streaks and flakes of light. It is somewhat singular that we should _look down_ on the surface of water.
We shall look down on the surface of air next, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over _it_.[51] Without inlet it lies, Without outlet it flows.
From and to the skies It comes and it goes.
I am its source, And my life is its course.
I am its stony shore And the breeze that passes o’er.[52] [Two thirds of a page missing.]
All that the money-digger had ever found was a pine-tree shilling, once as he was dunging out. He was paid much more for dunging out, but he valued more the money which he found. The boy thinks most of the cent he found, not the cent he earned; for it suggests to him that he may find a great deal more, but he knows that he can’t earn _much_, and perhaps did not deserve that.
[Two pages missing.]
Among the worst of men that ever lived.
However, we did seriously attend, A little space we let our thoughts ascend, Experienced our religion and confessed ’T was good for us to be there,—be anywhere.
Then to a heap of apples we addressed, And cleared a five-rail fence with hand on the topmost rider _sine_ care.
Then our Icarian thoughts returned to ground, And we went on to heaven the long way round.
What’s the railroad to me?
I never go to see Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows, And makes banks for the swallows; It sets the sand a-flowing, And blackberries a-growing.[53] _Aug. 31._ TALL AMBROSIA Among the signs of autumn I perceive The Roman wormwood (called by learned men _Ambrosia elatior_, food for gods, For by impartial science the humblest weed Is as well named as is the proudest flower) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I brush through the now neglected garden.
We trample under foot the food of gods And spill their nectar in each drop of dew.
My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray Far from my couch, thus powdered, countrified, Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure, At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have gone through, Who never walk, but are _transported_ rather, For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.
The gray blueberry bushes, venerable as oaks,—why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called _Vaccinium corymbosum_; some say _amœnum_, or blue bilberry, and _Vaccinium disomorphum_ Mx., black bilberry. Its fruit hangs on into September, but loses its wild and sprightly taste.
Th’ ambrosia of the Gods’s a weed on earth, Their nectar is the morning dew which on- Ly our shoes taste, for they are simple folks.
’T is very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth, as nectar is The morning dew which our shoes brush aside; For the gods are simple folks, and we should pine upon their humble fare.
The purple flowers of the humble trichostema mingled with the wormwood, smelling like it; and the spring-scented, dandelion-scented primrose, yellow primrose. The swamp-pink (_Azalea viscosa_), its now withered pistils standing out.
The odoriferous sassafras, with its delicate green stem, its three-lobed leaf, tempting the traveller to bruise it, it sheds so rare a perfume on him, equal to all the spices of the East. Then its rare-tasting root bark, like nothing else, which I used to dig. The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold.
The alder-leaved clethra (_Clethra alnifolia_), sweet-smelling queen of the swamp; its long white racemes.
We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall.
The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel, either _Cornus alba_ or _paniculata_, white-berried or panicled, beautiful both when full of fruit and when its cymes are naked; delicate red cymes or stems of berries; spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies, its little palms; fairy palms they might be called.
One of the viburnums, _Lentago_ or _pyrifolium_ or _nudum_, with its poisonous-looking fruit in cymes, first greenish-white, then red, then purple, or all at once.
The imp-eyed, red, velvety-looking berry of the swamps.[54] The spotted polygonum (_Polygonum Persicaria_), seen in low lands amid the potatoes now, wild prince’s-feather (?), slight flower that does not forget to grace the autumn.
The late whortleberry—dangleberry—that ripens now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling, September 1st; dangle down two or three inches; can rarely find many. They have a more transparent look, large, blue, long-stemmed, dangling, fruit of the swamp concealed.
I detect the pennyroyal which my feet have bruised. Butter-and-eggs still hold out to bloom.
* * * * * I notice that cows never walk abreast, but in single file commonly, making a narrow cow-path, or the herd walks in an irregular and loose wedge. They retain still the habit of all the deer tribe, acquired when the earth was all covered with forest, of travelling from necessity in narrow paths in the woods.
At sundown a herd of cows, returning homeward from pasture over a sandy knoll, pause to paw the sand and challenge the representatives of another herd, raising a cloud of dust between the beholder and the setting sun. And then the herd boys rush to mingle in the fray and separate the combatants, two cows with horns interlocked, the one pushing the other down the bank.
My grandmother called her cow home at night from the pasture over the hill, by thumping on a mortar out of which the cow was accustomed to eat salt.
At Nagog I saw a hundred bushels of huckleberries in one field.
* * * * * The Roman wormwood, pigweed, a stout, coarse red-topped (?) weed (_Amaranthus hybridus_), and spotted polygonum; these are the lusty growing plants now, September 2d.
Tall, slender, minute white-flowered weed in gardens, annual fleabane * * * * * One of my neighbors, of whom I borrowed a horse, cart, and harness to-day, which last was in a singularly dilapidated condition, considering that he is a wealthy farmer, did not know but I would make a book about it.
* * * * * As I was stalking over the surface of this planet in the dark to-night, I started a plover resting on the ground and heard him go off with whistling wings.
* * * * * My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in solitary fields and woods by night. Sometimes in my loneliest and wildest midnight walk I hear the sound of the whistle and the rattle of the cars, where perchance some of those very friends are being whirled by night over, as they think, a well-known, safe, and public road. I see that men do not make or choose their own paths, whether they are railroads or trackless through the wilds, but what the powers permit each one enjoys. My solitary course has the same sanction that the Fitchburg Railroad has. If they have a charter from Massachusetts and—what is of much more importance—from Heaven, to travel the course and in the fashion they do, I have a charter, though it be from Heaven alone, to travel the course I do,—to take the necessary lands and pay the damages. It is by the grace of God in both cases.
* * * * * Now, about the first of September, you will see flocks of small birds forming compact and distinct masses, as if they were not only animated by one spirit but actually held together by some invisible fluid or film, and will hear the sound of their wings rippling or fanning the air as they flow through it, flying, the whole mass, ricochet like a single bird,—or as they flow over the fence. Their mind must operate faster than man’s, in proportion as their bodies do.
* * * * * What a generation this is! It travels with some brains in its hat, with a couple of spare cigars on top of them. It carries a heart in its breast, covered by a lozenge in its waistcoat pocket.
* * * * * John Garfield brought me this morning (September 6th) a young great heron (_Ardea Herodias_), which he shot this morning on a pine tree on the North Branch. It measured four feet, nine inches, from bill to toe and six feet in alar extent, and belongs to a different race from myself and Mr. Frost. I am glad to recognize him for a native of America,—why not an American citizen?
In the twilight, when you can only see the outlines of the trees in the horizon, the elm-tops indicate where the houses are. I have looked afar over fields and even over distant woods and distinguished the conspicuous graceful, sheaf-like head of an elm which shadowed some farmhouse. From the northwest (?) part of Sudbury you can see an elm on the Boston road, on the hilltop in the horizon in Wayland, five or six miles distant. The elm is a tree which can be distinguished farther off perhaps than any other. The wheelwright still makes his hubs of it, his spokes of white oak, his fellies of yellow oak, which does not crack on the corners. In England, ’tis said, they use the ash for fellies.
There is a little grove in a swampy place in Conantum where some rare things grow,—several bass trees, two kinds of ash, sassafras, maidenhair fern, the white-berried plant (ivory?), etc., etc., and the sweet viburnum (?) in the hedge near by.
This will be called the wet year of 1850. The river is as high now, September 9th, as in the spring, and hence the prospects and the reflections seen from the village are something novel.
* * * * * Roman wormwood, pigweed, amaranth, polygonum, and one or two coarse kinds of grass reign now in the cultivated fields.
Though the potatoes have man with all his implements on their side, these rowdy and rampant weeds completely bury them, between the last hoeing and the digging. The potatoes hardly succeed with the utmost care: these weeds only ask to be _let alone_ a little while. I judge that they have not got the rot. I sympathize with all this luxuriant growth of weeds. Such is the year. The weeds grow as if in sport and frolic.
I do not know whether the practice of putting indigo-weed about horses’ tackling to keep off flies is well founded, but I hope it is, for I have been pleased to notice that wherever I have occasion to tie a horse I am sure to find indigo-weed not far off, and therefore this, which is so universally dispersed, would be the fittest weed for this purpose.
The thistle is now in bloom, which every child is eager to clutch * * * * * The prunella, self-heal, small purplish-flowered plant of low grounds.
* * * * * Charles[55] grew up to be a remarkably eccentric man. He was of large frame, athletic, and celebrated for his feats of strength. His lungs were proportionally strong. There was a man who heard him named once, and asked if it was the same Charles Dunbar whom he remembered when he was a little boy walking on the coast of Maine. A man came down to the shore and hailed a vessel that was sailing by. He should never forget that man’s name.
* * * * * It was well grassed, and delicate flowers grew in the middle of the road.
I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high Between the horses’ path and the wheel-track, Which Dakin’s and Maynard’s wagons had Passed over many a time.
An inch more to right or left had sealed its fate, Or an inch higher. And yet it lived and flourished As much as if it had a thousand acres Of untrodden space around it, and never Knew the danger it incurred.
It did not borrow trouble nor invite an Evil fate by apprehending it.[56] For though the distant market-wagon Every other day inevitably rolled This way, it just as inevitably rolled In those ruts. And the same Charioteer who steered the flower Upward guided the horse and cart aside from it.
There were other flowers which you would say Incurred less danger, grew more out of the way, Which no cart rattled near, no walker daily passed, But at length one rambling deviously— For no rut restrained—plucked them, And then it appeared that they stood Directly in his way, though he had come From farther than the market-wagon.
And then it appeared that this brave flower which grew between the wheel and horse did actually stand farther out of the way than that which stood in the wide prairie where the man of science plucked it.
To-day I climbed a handsome rounded hill Covered with hickory trees, wishing to see The country from its top, for low hills Show unexpected prospects. I looked Many miles over a woody lowland Toward Marlborough, Framingham, and Sudbury; And as I sat amid the hickory trees And the young sumachs, enjoying the prospect, a neat herd of cows approached, of unusually fair proportions and smooth, clean skins, evidently petted by their owner, who must have carefully selected them. One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did by degrees approach as if to take some morsel from our hands, while our hearts leaped to our mouths with expectation and delight. She by degrees drew near with her fair limbs progressive, making pretense of browsing; nearer and nearer, till there was wafted toward us the bovine fragrance,—cream of all the dairies that ever were or will be,—and then she raised her gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest recognition within hand’s reach. I saw ’t was possible for his herd to inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately featured as a hind. Her hide was mingled white and fawn-color, and on her muzzle’s tip there was a white spot not bigger than a daisy, and on her side toward me the map of Asia plain to see.
Farewell, dear heifer! Though thou forgettest me, my prayer to heaven shall be that thou may’st not forget thyself. There was a whole bucolic in her snuff. I saw her name was Sumach. And by the kindred spots I knew her mother, more sedate and matronly, with full-grown bag; and on her sides was Asia, great and small, the plains of Tartary, even to the pole, while on her daughter it was Asia Minor. She not disposed to wanton with the herdsman.
And as I walked, she followed me, and took an apple from my hand, and seemed to care more for the hand than apple. So innocent a face as I have rarely seen on any creature, and I have looked in face of many heifers. And as she took the apple from my hand, I caught the apple of her eye. She smelled as sweet as the clethra blossom. There was no sinister expression. And for horns, though she had them, they were so well disposed in the right place, bent neither up nor down, I do not now remember she had any. No horn was held toward me.[57] _Sept. 11. Wednesday._ The river higher than I ever knew it at this season, as high as in the spring.
* * * * * Yesterday, September 14, walked to White Pond in Stow, on the Marlborough road, having passed one pond called sometimes Pratt’s Pond, sometimes Bottomless Pond, in Sudbury. Saw afterward another pond beyond Willis’s also called Bottomless Pond, in a thick swamp. To name two ponds bottomless when both of them have a bottom! Verily men choose darkness rather than light.[58] The farmers are now cutting—topping—their corn, gathering their early fruit, raking their cranberries, digging their potatoes, etc.
Everything has its use, and man seeks sedulously for the best article for each use. The watchmaker finds the oil of the porpoise’s jaw the best for oiling his watches. Man has a million eyes, and the race knows infinitely more than the individual. Consent to be wise through your race.
* * * * * Autumnal mornings, when the feet of countless sparrows are heard like rain-drops on the roof by the boy who sleeps in the garret.
* * * * * Villages with a single long street lined with trees, so straight and wide that you can see a chicken run across it a mile off.
_Sept. 19._ The gerardia, yellow trumpet-like flower. Veiny-leaved hawkweed (leaves handsome, radical excepting one or two; know them well) (_Hieracium venosum_), flower like a dandelion.
Canada snapdragon, small pea-like blue flower in the wood-paths, (_Antirrhinum Canadense_). Pine-weed, thickly branched low weed with red seed-vessels, in wood-paths and fields, (_Sarothra gentianoides_).
minute flower which grows now in the middle of the Marlborough road.
* * * * * I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven,—would keep sober always, and lead a sane life not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish habitually use any other. Think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Wine is not a noble liquor, except when it is confined to the pores of the grape.
Even music is wont to be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.[59] I have seen where the rain dripped from the trees on a sand-bank on the Marlborough road, that each little pebble which had protected the sand made the summit of a sort of basaltic column of sand,—a phenomenon which looked as if it might be repeated on a larger scale in nature.
The goldenrods and asters impress me not like individuals but great families covering a thousand hills and having a season to themselves.
The indigo-weed turns black when dry, and I have been interested to find in each of its humble seed-vessels a worm.
The Deep Cut is sometimes excited to productiveness by a rain in midsummer. It impresses me somewhat as if it were a cave, with all its stalactites turned wrong side outward. Workers in bronze should come here for their patterns.
Those were carrots which I saw naturalized in Wheeler’s field. It was four or five years since he planted there.
To-day I saw a sunflower in the woods.
It is pleasant to see the _Viola pedata_ blossoming again now, in September, with a beauty somewhat serener than that of these yellow flowers.
The trees on the bank of the river have white furrows worn about them, marking the height of the freshets, at what levels the water has stood.
Water is so much more fine and sensitive an element than earth. A single boatman passing up or down unavoidably shakes the whole of a wide river, and disturbs its every reflection. The air is an element which our voices shake still further than our oars the water.
The red maples on the river, standing far in the water when the banks are overflown and touched by the earliest frosts, are memorable features in the scenery of the stream at this season.
Now you can scent the ripe grapes far off on the banks as you row along. Their fragrance is finer than their flavor.
My companion said he would drink when the boat got under the bridge, because the water would be cooler in the shade, though the stream quickly passes through the piers from shade to sun again. It is something beautiful, the act of drinking, the stooping to imbibe some of this widespread element, in obedience to instinct, without whim. We do not so simply drink in other influences.
It is pleasant to have been to a place by the way a river went.
The forms of trees and groves change with every stroke of the oar.
It seems hardly worth the while to risk the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds.
Oh, if I could be intoxicated on air and water![60] on hope and memory!
and always see the maples standing red in the midst of the waters on the meadow!
Those have met with losses, who have lost their children. I saw the widow this morning whose son was drowned.
That I might never be blind to the beauty of the landscape! To hear music without any vibrating cord!
A family in which there was singing in the morning. To hear a neighbor singing! All other speech sounds thereafter like profanity. A man cannot sing falsehood or cowardice; he must sing truth and heroism to attune his voice to some instrument. It would be noblest to sing with the wind. I have seen a man making himself a viol, patiently and fondly paring the thin wood and shaping it, and when I considered the end of the work he was ennobled in my eyes. He was building himself a ship in which to sail to new worlds. I am much indebted to my neighbor who will now and then in the intervals of his work draw forth a few strains from his accordion. Though he is but a learner, I find when his strains cease that I have been elevated.
The question is not whether you drink, but what liquor.
* * * * * Plucked a wild rose the 9th of October on Fair Haven Hill.
Butter-and-eggs, which blossomed several months ago, still freshly [in] bloom (October 11th).
He knew what shrubs were best for withes.
This is a remarkable year. Huckleberries are still quite abundant and fresh on Conantum. There have been more berries than pickers or even worms. (October 9th.)
I am always exhilarated, as were the early voyagers, by the sight of sassafras (_Laurus Sassafras_). The green leaves bruised have the fragrance of lemons and a thousand spices. To the same order belong cinnamon, cassia, camphor.
Hickory is said to be an Indian name. (Nuttall’s continuation of Michaux.)
The seed vessel of the sweet-briar is a very beautiful glossy elliptical fruit. What with the fragrance of its leaves, its blossom, and its fruit, it is thrice crowned.
* * * * * I observed to-day (October 17th) the small blueberry bushes by the path-side, now blood-red, full of white blossoms as in the spring, the blossoms of spring contrasting strangely with the leaves of autumn. The former seemed to have expanded from sympathy with the maturity of the leaves.
* * * * * Walter Colton in his “California”[61] says, “Age is no certain evidence of merit, since folly runs to seed as fast as wisdom.”
The imagination never forgives an insult.
* * * * * Left Concord, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec.
Fare $7.00 to and fro. Obliged to leave Montreal on return as soon as Friday, October 4th. The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg.
In Ashburnham and afterwards I noticed the woodbine.[62] [Eighty-four pages missing,—doubtless the Canada journal.]
* * * * * However mean your life is, meet it and live; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perchance have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s house.
The snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts as anywhere, and, indeed, the town’s poor seem to live the most independent lives of any. They are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Cultivate poverty like sage, like a garden herb. Do not trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends.
That is dissipation. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. If I were confined to a corner in a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts.[63] In all my travels I never came to the abode of the present.
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose alloy was poured a little bell-metal. Sometimes in the repose of my mid-day there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.[64] That the brilliant leaves of autumn are not withered ones is proved by the fact that they wilt when gathered as soon as the green.
But now, October 31st, they are all withered. This has been the most perfect afternoon in the year. The air quite warm enough, perfectly still and dry and clear, and not a cloud in the sky. Scarcely the song of a cricket is heard to disturb the stillness. When they ceased their song I do not know. I wonder that the impetus which our hearing had got did not hurry us into deafness over a precipitous silence. There must have been a thick web of cobwebs on the grass this morning, promising this fair day, for I see them still through the afternoon, covering not only the grass but the bushes and the trees. They are stretched across the unfrequented roads from weed to weed, and broken by the legs of the horses.
I thought to-day that it would be pleasing to study the dead and withered plants, the ghosts of plants, which now remain in the fields, for they fill almost as large a space to the eye as the green have done. They live not in memory only, but to the fancy and imagination.
As we were passing through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance in a field, one passenger exclaimed so that all the passengers could hear him, “There, there’s not so good a house as that in all Canada.” And I did not much wonder at his remark. There is a neatness as well as thrift and elastic comfort, a certain flexible easiness of circumstance when not rich, about a New England house which the Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they were no better constructed than a stone barn would be with us. The only building on which money and taste are expended is the church.[65] At