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WINTER: FEOM THE JOURNAL
OF HENRY D. THOREAU
EDITED BY H. G. O. BLAKE
Knowledge means
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
That victory is somehow still to reach ;
But love is victory, the prize itself.
BROWNINQ
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1888
Copyright, 1887,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.
INTRODUCTORY.
To those who are not specially interested in
the character of Thoreau, who regard him
merely as a writer who has sometimes expressed
original thoughts in a happy way, who has
made some interesting observations of natural
phenomena, and at times written beautifully
about nature, it may seem hardly worth while
to publish more of his journal. But from time
to time I meet with or receive letters from
persons who feel the same deep interest in him
as an individual, in his thoughts and views of
life, that I do, and who, I am sure, will eagerly
welcome any additional expression of that indi
viduality. Of course there are many such per
sons of whom I do not hear.
Thoreau himself regarded literature as alto
gether secondary to life, strange as this may
seem to those who think of him as a hermit
or dreamer, shunning what are commonly con
sidered as among the most important practical
realities, trade, politics, the church, the institu
tions of society generally. He took little part in
M773716
IV INTRODUCTORY.
these things because he believed they would
stand in the way of his truest life, and to attain
that, as far as possible, he knew to be his first
business in the world. Even in a philanthropic
point of view, any superficial benefit he might
confer by throwing himself into the current of
society would be as nothing compared with the
loss of real power and influence which would
result from disobedience to his highest instincts.
" Ice that merely performs the office of a burning
glass does not do its duty." It was not sufficient
for him to entertain and express as an author
" subtle thoughts," but he aspired rather " so to
love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates,
a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity,
and trust," " to solve some of the problems of
life not only theoretically, but practically." It is
the clear insight early creating a deep, persistent
determination so to live, rather than his genius,
which gives value to Thoreau s work, though
this insight itself may well be regarded as the
highest form of genius. It is the attitude one
takes toward the world, far more than any abili
ties he may possess, which gives significance to
his life. It has been well said by Brownlee
Brown that " courage, piety, wit, zeal, learning,
eloquence, avail nothing, unless the man is
right."
INTRODUCTORY. V
As the young pass out of childhood, that fore
taste or symbol of the kingdom of heaven, the
expression of serene innocence is too apt to fade
from their faces and the clouds to gather there,
while it is considered a matter of course that
each one should attach himself to the social
machine. One becomes a lawyer, another a
clergyman, another a physician, another a
merchant, and the treasure which the childlike
soul has lost is sought to be regained in some
general and far-off way by society at large.
But the burden which men thus readily take
upon themselves in the common race for comfort,
luxury, and social position is out of all proportion
to their spiritual vitality, and so the truest life
of individuals is being continually sacrificed to
the Juggernaut of society. Men associate al
most universally in the shallower and falser
part of their natures, so that while institutions
may seem to flourish, corruption is also gaining
ground through the spiritual failure of individ
uals ; finally the fabric falls, and a new form
rises to go through the same round. The
highest form of civilization at the present day
seems to be an advance upon all that have pre
ceded it, though in some particulars it plainly
falls behind. Perhaps only by this alternate
rising and falling can the human race advance.
vi INTRODUCTORY.
But the progress of individuals is the essential
thing ; only so far as that takes place will the
real progress of the race follow, and those per
sons contribute most to this real progress who,
stepping aside from the ordinary routine, give
us by their lives and thoughts a new sense of
the reality of what is best, of the ideal towards
which all civilization must aim ; who are so in
love with truth, rectitude, and the beauty of the
world, including in this, first of all, the original,
unimpaired beauty of the human soul, that they
have little care for material prosperity, social
position, or public opinion. It was not merely
nature in the ordinary sense, plants, animals, the
landscape, etc., which attracted Thoreau. He
is continually manifesting a human interest in
natural objects, and thoughts of an ideal friend
ship are forever haunting him. Touching the
highest and fairest relation of one human soul
to another, I do not believe there can be found
in literature, ancient or modern, anything finer,
anything which comes closer home to our best
experience, than what appears in Thoreau s
writings generally, and especially in " Wednes
day" of the " Week on the Concord and Merri-
mack Rivers."
THE EDITOR.
WINTER.
December 21, 1851. My difficulties with my
friends are such as no frankness will settle.
There is no precept in the New Testament that
will assist me. . . . Others can confess and ex
plain, I cannot. It is not that I am too proud.
But explanation is not what is wanted. Friend
ship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that
result to two or more individuals who from con
stitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to
no mistakes, but will know each other through
thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and
fitted to sympathize there is no veil, and there
can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged ?
Two friends explaining.
I feel sometimes as if I could say. to my
friends, " My friends, I am aware how I have
outraged you, how I have seemingly preferred
hate to love, seemingly treated others kindly
and you unkindly, sedulously concealed my love,
and sooner or later expressed all and more than
all my hate." I can imagine how I might utter
2 . WINTER.
something like this, in some moment never to
be realized, but, at the same time, let me say
frankly that I feel I might say it with too little
regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be
what I am. If the truth were known, which I
do not know, I have no concern with those
friends whom I misunderstand or who misunder
stand me. The fates only are unkind that keep
us asunder ; but my friend is ever kind. I am
of the nature of stone. It takes the summer s
sun to warm it. My acquaintances sometimes
imply that I am too cold, but each thing is warm
enough for its kind. Is the stone too cold
which absorbs the heat of the summer sun,
and does not part with it during the night?
Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold
to melt ; it was in melting that they were
formed. Cold ! I am most sensible of warmth
in winter days. It is not the warmth of fire
that you would have ; everything is warm or
cold according to its nature. It is not that I
am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness
are not of the same nature. Hence when I am
absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you.
Crystal does not complain of crystal any more
than the dove of its mate. You who complain
that I am cold, find Nature cold. To me she
is warm. My heat is latent to you. Fire itself
is cold to whatever is not of a nature to be
WINTER. 3
warmed by it. ... That I am cold means that I
am of another nature. ...
How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at
sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its
axis.
Dec. 21, 1853. We are tempted to call these
the finest days of the year. Take Fair Haven
Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of
snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, sur
rounded by snow-clad hills, dark, evergreen
woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.
The last rays of the sun falling on Baker Farm
reflect a clear pink color. I see the feathers
of a partridge strewn along on the snow for a
long distance, the work of some hawk, perhaps,
for there is no track.
What a groveling appetite for profitless jest
and amusement our countrymen have ! Next to
a good dinner, at least, they love a good joke,
to have their sides tickled, to laugh sociably, as
in the East they bathe and are shampooed. Cu
rators of Lyceums write to me,
DEAR SIR, I hear that you have a lecture
of some humor. Will you do us the favor to
read it before the Bungtown Institute ?
Dec. 22, 1851. If I am thus seemingly cold
compared with my companion s warm, who
knows but mine is a less transient glow, a stead
ier and more equable heat, like that of the
4 WINTER.
earth in spring, in which the flowers spring and
expand. It is not words that I wish to hear or
to utter, but relations that I wish to stand in,
and it oftener happens, methinks, I go away
unmet, unrecognized, ungreeted in my offered
relation, than that you are disappointed of
words.
I have seen in the form, in the expression of
face, of a child three years old the tried magna
nimity and grave nobility of ancient and departed
worthies. I saw a little Irish boy, come from the
distant shanty in the woods over the bleak rail
road to school this morning, take his last step
from the last snow-drift on to the school-
house door-step, floundering still, saw not his
face nor his profile, only his mien ; I imagined,
saw clearly in imagination, his old worthy face
behind the sober visor of his cap. Ah ! this
little Irish boy, I know not why, revives to my
mind the worthies of antiquity. He is not
drawn, he never was drawn, in a willow wagon.
He progresses by his own brave steps. Has not
the world waited for such a generation. Here
he condescends to his a b c, without one smile,
who has the lore of worlds uncounted in his
brain. He speaks not of the adventures of the
causeway. What was the bravery of Leonidas
and his three hundred boys at the Pass of Ther
mopylae to this infant s ! They but dared to die,
WINTER. 5
he dares to live, and take his " reward of merit,"
perchance (without relaxing his face into a
smile), that overlooks his unseen and unregard-
able merits. Little Johnny Riorden, who faces
cold and routs it like a Persian army. While
the charitable waddle about cased in furs, he,
lively as a cricket, passes them on his way to
school.
Dec. 22, 1853. Surveying the Hunt farm.
A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture this
of Hunt s, with two or three great white oaks
to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not
take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship
builder wanted them.
It is pleasant, as you are cutting a path
through a swamp, to see the color of the differ
ent woods, the yellowish dogwood, the green
prinos (?), and on the upland, the splendid yel
low barberry. . . . You cannot go out so early
but you will find the track of some wild crea
ture.
Returning home just after the sun had sunk
below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett s a
fire made by boys on the ice near the Red
bridge which looked like the bright reflection
of the setting sun from the water under the
bridge, so clear, so little lurid in this winter
evening.
Dec. 22, 1858. P. M. To Walden. I see in
6 WINTER.
the cut near the shanty site quite a flock of
Fringilla hyemalis and goldfinches together on
the snow and weeds and ground. Hear the
well-known mew and watery twitter of the last,
and the drier " chill chill " of the former. These
burning yellow birds, with a little black and
white in their coat flaps, look warm above the
snow. There may be thirty goldfinches, very
"brisk and pretty tame. They hang, head down
wards, on the weeds. I hear of their coming to
pick sunflower seeds in Melvin s garden these
days.
Dec. 22, 1859. Another fine winter day.
p. M. To Flint s Pond. . . . We pause and
gaze into the Mill brook on the Turnpike bridge.
I see a good deal of cress there on the bottom
for a rod or two, the only green thing to be
seen. ... Is not this the plant which most, or
most conspicuously, preserves its greenness in the
winter? ... It is as green as ever, and waving
in the stream as in summer.
How nicely is Nature adjusted. The least
disturbance of her equilibrium is betrayed and
corrects itself. As I looked down on the sur
face of the brook, I was surprised to see a leaf
floating, as I thought, up stream, but I was mis
taken. The motion of a particle of dust on the
surface of any brook far inland shows which
way the earth declines toward the sea, which
WINTER. 1
way lies the constantly descending route, and
the only one.
I see in the chestnut woods near Flint s Pond
where squirrels have collected the small chestnut
burs left on the trees, and opened them gener
ally at the base of the trunks on the snow.
These are, I think, all small and imperfect burs,
which do not so much as open in the fall, and
are rejected then, but hanging on the tree, they
have this use, at least, as the squirrels winter
food. . . .
The fisherman stands still and erect on the
ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to
say that he has had no luck. He has been here
since early morning, and for some reason or
other he has had no luck ; the fishes won t bite,
you won t catch him here again in a hurry.
They all tell the same story. The amount of it
is, he has had " fisherman s luck," and if you
walk that way, you may find him at his old post
to-morrow. It is hard, to be sure ; four little
fishes to be divided between three men, and two
and a half miles to walk ; and you have only
got a more ravenous appetite for the supper
which you have not earned. However, the pond
floor is not a bad place whereon to spend a win
ter day.
Dec. 23, 1837. Crossed the river to-day on
the ice. Though the weather is raw and win-
8 WINTER.
try, and the ground covered with snow, I noticed
a solitary robin. . . .
In the side of the high bank by the leaning
hemlock there were some curious crystalliza
tions. Wherever the water or other cause had
formed a hole in the bank, its throat and outer
edge, like the entrance to a citadel of the olden
time, bristled with a glistening ice armor. In
one place you might see minute ostrich feathers
which seemed the waving plumes of the war
riors filing into the fortress, in another, the
glancing fan-shaped banners of the Liliputian
host, and in another, the needle-shaped particles
collected into bundles resembling the plumes of
the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears.
The whole hill was like an immense quartz rock
with minute crystals sparkling from innumer
able crannies.
Dec. 23, 1841. The best man s spirit makes
a fearful sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost
of a priest is no better than that of a highway
man. It is pleasant to hear of one who has
blest whole regions after his death by having
frequented them while alive, who has profaned
or tabooed no place by being buried in it. It
adds not a little to the fame of Little John that
his grave was long " celebrous for the yielding of
excellent whetstones."
A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place ;
WINTER. 9
as the oaks among the Druids, and the grove of
Egeria, and even in more familiar and common
life, as " Barnsdale wood " and " Sherwood. "
Had Robin Hood no Sherwood to resort to, it
would be difficult to invest his story with the
charms it has got. It is always the tale that is
untold, the deeds done, and the life lived in the
unexplored scenery of the wood, that charm us
and make us children again, to read his ballads
and hear of the greenwood tree.
Dec. 23, 1851. . . . It is a record of the mel
low and ripe moments that I would keep. I
would not preserve the husk of life, but the ker
nel. When the cup of life is full and flowing
over, preserve some drops as a specimen sample ;
when the intellect enlightens the heart and the
heart warms the intellect. Thoughts sometimes
possess our heads when we are up and about our
business which are the exact counterpart of the
bad dreams we sometimes have by night, and I
think the intellect is equally inert in both cases.
Very frequently, no doubt, the thoughts men
have are the consequence of something they
have eaten or done. Our waking moods and
humors are our dreams, but whenever we are
truly awake and serene and healthy in all our
senses, we have memorable visions. Who that
takes up a book wishes for the report of the
clogged bowels or the impure blood ?
10 WINTER.
Dec. 23, 1855. P. M. To Conantum End. A
very bright and pleasant day with a remarkably
soft wind from a little N. of W. The frost has
come out so in the rain of yesterday, that I avoid
the muddy plowed fields, and keep on the green
ground which shines with moisture. . . .
I admire those old root fences which have al
most disappeared from tidy fields, white pine
roots got out when the neighboring meadow was
a swamp, the monuments of many a revolution.
These roots have not penetrated into the ground,
but spread over the surface, and having been cut
off four or five feet from the stump were hauled
off and set up on their edges for a fence. The
roots were not merely interwoven, but grown to
gether into solid frames, full of loop-holes like
Gothic windows of various sizes and all shapes,
triangular, and oval, and harp-like, and the slen
derer parts are dry and resonant like harp strings.
They are rough and unapproachable, with a hun
dred snags and horns, which bewilder and balk
the calculation of the walker who would sur
mount them. The part of the trees above
ground present no such fantastic forms. Here
is one seven paces or more than a rod long, six
feet high in the middle, and yet only one foot
thick, and two men could turn it up. In this
case the roots were six or nine inches thick at
the extremities. The roots of pines in swamps
WINTER. 11
grow thus in the form of solid frames or rack
ets, and those of different trees are interwoven
withal so that they stand on a very broad foot,
and stand or fall together to some extent be
fore the blasts as herds meet the assaults of
beasts of prey with serried front. You have
thus only to dig into the swamp a little way to
find your fence, post, rails, and slats already
solidly grown together, and of material more
durable than any timber. How pleasing a
thought that a field should be fenced with the
roots of the trees got out in clearing the land a
century before. I regret them as mementos of
the primitive forest. The tops of the same trees
made into fencing stuff would have decayed gen
erations ago. These roots are singularly unob-
noxious to the effects of moisture. . . .
Think of the life of a kitten, ours, for in
stance. Last night her eyes set in a fit ; it is
doubtful if she will ever come out of it, and she
is set away in a basket and submitted to the re
cuperative powers of nature ; this morning run
ning up the clothes pole, and erecting her back
in frisky sport to every passer.
Dec. 23, 1856. Some savage tribes must
share the experience of the lower animals in
their relation to man. With what thoughts
must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from
the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not
12 WINTER.
a natural, but an artificial product, the work of
man s hands, the waste of the commerce of a
superior race whom perhaps he never saw I
The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon
of the coldest nights. After being waked by
the loud cracks of the 18th at Amherst, a man
told me in the morning that he had seen a crack
running across the plain (I saw it) almost
broad enough to put his hand into. This was
an exaggeration. It was not one fourth of an
inch wide. I saw a great many the same fore
noon running across the road in Nashua, every
few rods, and also by our house in Concord the
same day when I got home. So it seems the
ground was cracking all the country over. Part
ly, no doubt, because there was so little snow,
or none. None at Concord.
If the writer would interest readers, he must
report so much life, using a certain satisfaction
always as a point cTappui. However mean and
limited, it must be a genuine and contented life
that he speaks out of. His readers must have
the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat
of his experience and joy.
Dec. 23, 1860. . . . Larks were about our
house the middle of this month.
Dec. 24, 1840. The same sun has not yet
shone on me and my friend. He would hardly
have to look at me to recognize me, but glimmer
WINTER. 13
with half-shut eye like some friendly distant
taper when we are benighted. I do not talk
to any intellect in nature, but am presuming an
infinite heart somewhere into which I play.
Dec. 24, 1841. I want to go soon and live
away by the pond where I shall hear only the
wind whispering among the reeds. It will be
success if I shall have left myself behind. But
my friends ask what I will do when I get there !
Will it not be employment enough to watch the
progress of the seasons ?
Dec. 24, 1850. Saw a shrike pecking to
pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird. At
length he took him up in his bill, almost half as
big as himself, and flew slowly off with his prey
dangling from his beak. I find that I had not
associated such actions with my idea of birds.
It was not bird-like.
It is never so cold but it melts somewhere.
Our mason well remarked that he had some
times known it to be melting and freezing at the
same time on a particular side of a house ; while
it was melting on the roof, icicles were forming
under the eaves. It is always melting and freez
ing at the same time where icicles are formed.
Our thoughts are with those among the dead
into whose sphere we are rising, or who are now
rising into our own. Others we inevitably for
get, though they be brothers and sisters. Thus
14 WINTER.
the departed may be nearer to us than when
they were present. At death, our friends and
relatives either draw nearer to us, and are found
out, or depart farther from us, and are forgot
ten. Friends are as often brought nearer to
gether as separated by death.
Dec. 24, 1853. . . . Walden almost entirely
open again. Skated across Flint s Pond, for the
most part smooth, but with rough spots where
the rain had not melted the snow. From the hill
beyond I get an arctic view N. W. The moun
tains are of a cold slate color. It is as if they
bounded the continent toward Behring s Straits.
In Weston s field in springy land on the edge
of a swamp I counted thirty-three or four of
those large silvery brown cocoons within a rod
or two, and probably there are many more ;
about a foot from the ground, commonly on
the main stem, though sometimes on a branch
close to the stem, of the alder, sweet fern, brake,
etc. The largest are four inches long by two
and one half wide, bag-shaped and wrinkled, and
partly concealed by dry leaves, alder, fern, etc.,
attached, as if sprinkled over them. This evi
dence of cunning in so humble a creature is
affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an
intelligence which the creature does not share,
as much as we do the prerogative of reason.
This radiation of the brain ! The bare silvery
WINTER. 15
cocoon would otherwise be too obvious. The
worm has evidently said to itself, man or some
other creature may come by and see my casket.
I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it.
Brake, and sweet fern, and alder leaves are not
only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from
it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and
almost incorporated into it.
Dec. 24, 1854. Some three inches of snow
fell last night and this morning, concluding
with a fine rain, which produced a slight glaze,
the first of the winter. This gives the woods
a hoary aspect, and increases the stillness by
making the leaves immovable even in a consid
erable wind.
Dec. 24, 1856. . . . Noticed at E. end of
the westernmost Andromeda Pond the slender
spikes of Lycopus with half-a-dozen little spher
ical dark brown whorls of pungently fragrant
or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like or even
like flagroot (?) when bruised. I am not sure
that the seeds of any other mint are thus fra
grant now. It scents your handkerchief or
pocket-book finely when the crumbled whorls
are sprinkled over them. It was very pleas
ant walking thus before the storm was over, in
the soft, subdued light. We are more domes
ticated in nature when our vision is confined to
near and familiar objects. Did not see a track
16 WINTER.
of any animal till returning, near Well-Meadow
Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I
had a glimpse of, had been coursing back and
forth in the path and near it for three quarters
of a mile. They had made quite a path.
I do not take snuff. In my winter walks
I stoop and bruise between my thumb and fin
ger the dry whorls of the Lycopus or water
horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping
them off, and smell that. That is as near as I
come to the Spice Islands.
Dec. 24, 1859. ... I measure the blueberry
bush on Fairhaven Pond Island. The five
stems are united at the ground so as to make
one round and solid trunk thirty-one inches in
circumference, but probably they have grown
together there, for they become separate at
about six inches above. They may have sprung
from different seeds of one berry. At three feet
from the ground they measure eleven, eleven,
eleven and one half, eight, and six and one half
or on an average nine and one half inches. I
climbed up and found a comfortable seat, with
my feet four feet from the ground. There was
room for three or four more there, but unfortu
nately this was not the season for berries.
There were several other clumps of large ones
in the neighborhood. One clump close by the
former contained twenty-three stems within a
WINTER. 17
diameter of three feet, arid their average diame
ter at three feet from the ground was about two
inches These had not been cut because they
stood on this small island which has little wood
beside, and therefore had grown thus large. . . .
The stems rise up in a winding and zigzag
manner, one sometimes resting in the forks of
its neighbor. Judging from those whose rings
I have counted, the largest of those stems must
be about sixty years old.
Dec. 25, 1840. The character of Washing
ton has, after all, been undervalued, because not
valued correctly. He was a proper Puritan
hero. It is his erectness and persistency which
attract me. A few simple deeds with a digni
fied silence for background, and that is all. He
never fluctuated, nor lingered, nor stooped, nor
swerved, but was nobly silent and assured.
He was not the darling of the people, as no man
of integrity can ever be, but was as much re
spected as loved. His instructions to his stew
ard, his refusal of a crown, his interview with
his officers at the termination of the war, his
thoughts after his retirement, as expressed in a
letter to La Fayette, his remarks to another cor
respondent on his being chosen president, his
last words to Congress, and the unparalleled re
spect which his most distinguished contempora
ries, as Fox and Erskine, expressed for him, are
18 WINTER.
refreshing to read in these unheroic days. His
behavior in the field and in council and his dig
nified and contented withdrawal to private life
were great. He could advance and he could
withdraw.
Dec. 25, 1841. It seems as if Nature did for
a long time gently overlook the profanity of
man. The wood still kindly echoes the strokes
of the axe, and when the strokes are few and
seldom, they add a new charm to a walk. All
the elements strive to naturalize the sound. . . .
It is not a true apology for any coarseness to
say that it is natural. The grim woods can
afford to be very delicate and perfect in the
details.
I don t want to feel as if my life were a so
journ any longer. That philosophy cannot be
true which so paints it. It is time now that I
begin to live.
Dec. 25, 1851. ... I go forth to see the sun
set. Who knows how it will set even half an
hour beforehand ? Whether it will go down in
clouds or a clear sky ? . . . I witness a beauty
in the form or coloring of the clouds which
addresses itself to my imagination. It is what
it suggests and is the symbol of that I care
for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it
of this, you do me no service and explain noth
ing. I, standing twenty miles off, see a crim-
WINTER. 19
son cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a
mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and
reflects the red; but that is nothing to the pur
pose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my
blood, makes my thoughts flow. I have new and
indescribable fancies, and you have not touched
the secret of that influence. If there is not
something mystical in your explanation, ... it is
quite insufficient. . . . What sort of science is
that which enriches the understanding, but robs
the imagination ? Not merely robs Peter to pay
Paul, but takes from Peter more than it ever
gives to Paul. That is simply the way in which
it speaks to the understanding, . . . but that is
not the way it speaks to the imagination. . . .
Just as inadequate to a mere mechanic would be
a poet s account of a steam-engine. If we knew
all things thus mechanically merely, should we
know anything really ? It would be a true dis
cipline for the writer to take the least film of
thought that floats in the twilight sky of his
mind for his theme, about which he has scarcely
one idea (that would be teaching his ideas how
to shoot), make a lecture on this, by assiduity
and attention get perchance two views of the
same, increase a little the stock of knowledge,
clear a new field instead of manuring the old. . . .
We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the
mind to the experience of the hand, to prove
20 WINTER.
our gossamer truths practical, to show their con
nection with every-day life (better show their
distance from every-day life), to relate them to
the cider mill and the banking institution. . . .
That way of viewing things you know of, least
insisted on by you however, least remembered,
take that view, adhere to that, insist on that ; see
all things from that point of view. Will you
let these intimations go unattended to, and watch
the door bell or knocker ? . . . Do not speak for
other men ; think for yourself. You are shown
as in a vision the kingdoms of this world, and of
all the worlds, but you prefer to look in upon a
puppet show. Though you should speak but to
one kindred mind in all time, though you should
not speak to one, but only utter aloud, that you
may the more completely realize and live in,
the idea which contains the reason of your life,
that you may build yourself up to the height of
your conceptions, that you may remember your
creator in the days of your youth, and justify
his ways to man, that the end of life may not
be its amusement.
Dec. 25, 1853. P. M. Skated to Fair Haven
and above. . . . About 4 p. M. the sun sank be
hind a cloud and the pond began to whoop or
boom. I noticed the same yesterday at the same
hour on Flint s. It was perfectly silent before.
The weather in both cases clear, cold, and windy.
WINTER. 21
It is a sort of belching, and as C. said, somewhat
frog-like. I suspect it did not continue to whoop
long either night. It is a very pleasing phenom
enon, so dependent on the attitude of the sun.
When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight
through the city down to the end of Long
Wharf and look off, for I have no cousins in the
back alleys. The water and the vessels are
novel and interesting. What are our maritime
cities but the shops and dwellings of merchants
about a wharf projecting into the sea where
there is a convenient harbor, on which to land
the produce of other climes, and at which to load
the exports of your own. Next in interest to me
is the market where the produce of our own
country is collected. Boston, New York, Phila
delphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and many
others are the names of wharves projecting into
the sea. They are good places to take in or
to discharge a cargo. I see a great many bar
rels and fig drums, and piles of wood for um
brella sticks, and blocks of granite and ice, etc.,
and that is Boston. Great piles of goods, and
the means of packing and conveying them, much
wrapping paper and twine, many crates and
hogsheads and trucks, that is Boston. The more
barrels, the more Boston. The museums and
scientific societies and libraries are accidental.
They gather around the barrels to save carting.
22 WINTER.
Apparently the ice is held down on the sides
of the river by being frozen to the shore and the
weeds, and so is overflowed there ; but in the
middle it is lifted up and makes room for the
tide.
I saw just above Fair Haven Pond two or
three places where just before the last freezing,
when the ice was softened and partly covered
with sleet, there had been a narrow canal about
eight inches wide quite across the river from
meadow to meadow. I am constrained to be
lieve, from the peculiar character of it on the
meadow end, where in one case it divided and
crossed itself, that it was made either by musk-
rats or otters or minks repeatedly crossing there.
One end was, for some distance, like an otter
trail in the soft upper part of the ice, not worn
through.
Dec. 25, 1856. p. M. To Lee s Cliff. A
strong wind from the N. W. is gathering the
snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls.
As usual, they resemble shells more than any
thing else, sometimes the prows of vessels, also
the folds of a white napkin or counterpane
dropped over a bonneted head. There are no
such picturesque snowdrifts as are formed be
hind loose and open stone walls. . . .
Take long walks in stormy weather, or through
deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would
WINTER. 23
keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature.
Be cold and hungry and weary.
Dec. 25, 1858. . . . Now that the sun is set
ting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-
clad pond [Walden], and strike the rocky shore
under the pitch pines at the N. E. end. Though
the bare, rocky shore there is only a foot or a
foot and a half high, as I look, it reflects so
much light that the rocks are singularly distinct,
as if the pond showed its teeth. . . . How full
of soft, pure light the western sky now, after
sunset ! I love to see the outlines of the pines
against it. Unless you watch, you do not know
when the sun goes down. It is like a candle ex
tinguished without smoke. A moment ago you
saw that glittering orb amid the dry oak leaves
in the horizon and now you can detect no trace
of it. ...
But for all voice in that serene hour, I hear
an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him
rather than the most eloquent man of the age.
Dec. 25, 1859. How different are men and
women, e. g. 9 in respect to the adornment of
their heads. Do you ever see an old or jammed
bonnet on the head of a woman at a public meet
ing? But look at any assembly of men with
their hats on; how large a proportion of the
hats will be old, weather-beaten, and indented;
but, I think, so much more picturesque and in-
24 WINTER.
teresting. One farmer rides by my door in a
hat which it does me good to see, there is so much
character in it, so much independence, to begin
with, and then affection for his old friends, etc.,
etc. I should not wonder if there were lichens
on it. Think of painting a hero in a brand-new
hat ! The chief recommendation of the Kossuth
hat is that it looks old to start with, and almost
as good as new to end with. Indeed, it is gen
erally conceded that a man does not look the
worse for a somewhat dilapidated hat. But go
to a lyceum and look at the bonnets and various
other head gear of the women and girls (who,
by the way, keep their hats on, it being too dan
gerous and expensive to take them off), why,
every one looks as fragile as a butterfly s wings,
having just come out of a bandbox, as it will go
into a bandbox again when the lyceum is over.
Men wear their hats for use, women theirs for
ornament. I have seen the greatest philosopher
in the town with what the traders would call a
"shocking bad hat" on, but the woman whose
bonnet does not come up to the mark is at best
a blue-stocking. The man is not particularly
proud of his beaver and musquash, but the
woman flaunts her ostrich and sable in your face.
Ladies are in haste to dress as if it were cold or
as if it were warm, though it may not yet be so,
merely to display a new dress.
WINTER. 25
Dec. 26, 1840. . . . When the pond is frozen
I do not suspect the wealth under my feet. How
many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms
below the loaded wain. The revolution of the
seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them.
Now the sun and wind brush aside their curtain,
and they see the heavens again.
Sunday, Dec. 26, 1841. . . . When I hear
this bell ring, I am carried back to years and
Sabbaths when I was newer and more innocent,
I fear, than now, and it seems to me as if there
were a world within a world. Sin, I am sure, is
not in overt acts, or indeed in acts of any kind,
but is in proportion to the time which has come
behind us, and displaced eternity, to the degree
in which our elements are mixed with the ele
ments of the world. The whole duty of life is
implied in the question, how to respire and as
pire both at once.
Dec. 26, 1850. The pine woods seen from the
hill-tops, now that the ground is covered with
snow, are not green, but a dark brown, greenish
brown, perhaps. You see dark patches of wood.
Dec. 26, 1851. I observed this afternoon that
when E H came home from sledding
wood and unyoked his oxen, they made a busi
ness of stretching and scratching themselves
with their horns, rubbing themselves against
the posts, and licking themselves in those parts
26 WINTER.
which the yoke had prevented their reaching all
day. The human way in which they behaved af
fected me even pathetically. They were too se
rious to be glad that their day s work was done ;
they had not spirits enough left for that. They
behaved as a tired wood-chopper might. This
was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring
ox. It is painful to think how they may some
times be overworked.
Dec. 26, 1853. This forenoon it snowed pretty
hard for some hours, the first snow of any conse
quence thus far. It is about three inches deep.
I go out at 2 P. M. just as it ceases. Now is
the time before the wind rises, or the sun has
shone, to go forth and see the snow on the trees.
The clouds have lifted somewhat, but are still
spitting snow a little. The vapor of the steam-
engiiie does not rise high in the misty air. . . .
The snow has fallen so gently that it forms an
upright wall on the slenderest twig. The agree
able maze which the branches make is more ob
vious than ever, and every twig thus laden is as
still as the hillside itself. The pitch pines are
covered with soft globular masses. The effect
of the snow is to press down the forest, con
found it with the grasses, and create a new sur
face to the earth above, shutting us in with it,
and we go along somewhat like moles through
our galleries. The sight of the pure and track-
WINTER. 27
less road up Blister s Hill, with branches and
trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it
on each side, would tempt us to begin life again.
The ice is covered up and skating gone. The
bare hills are so white that I cannot see their
outlines against the misty sky. The snow lies
handsomely on the shrub-oaks, like a coarse
braiding in the air. They have so many small
and zigzag twigs that it comes near to filling up
with a light snow to that depth. The hunters
are already out with dogs to follow the first
beast that makes a track. Saw a small flock
of tree sparrows in the sproutlands under Bart-
lett s Cliff. Their metallic chip is much like the
lisp of the chickadee. All weeds with their
seeds rising dark above the snow are now re
markably conspicuous, which before were not ob
served against the dark earth. I passed by
the pitch pine that was struck by lightning, and
was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing
that broad, distinct, spiral mark, more distinct
even than when made eight years ago, as one
might groove a walking stick, . . . mark where
a terrific and resistless bolt came down from
heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago.
It seemed a sacred spot. I felt that we had not
learned much since the days of Tullus Hostilius.
The tree at length shows the effect of the shock,
and the woodpeckers have begun to bore it on
one side.
28 WINTER.
Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver,
probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper or what
not, with the markings, so far as I saw, of the
crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head,
a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black
back, and apparently no tail. It dived and
swam a few rods under water, and when on the
surface kept turning round and round warily,
nodding its head the while. This is the only
pond hereabouts that is open.
Was overtaken by an Irishman seeking work.
I asked him if he could chop wood. He said he
was not long in this country, that he could cut
one side of a tree well enough, but he had not
learned to change hands and cut the other, with
out going round it, what we call crossing the calf.
They get very small wages at this season of the
year, almost give up the ghost in the effort to
keep soul and body together. He left me on
the run to find a new master.
Dec. 26, 1854. At R s [New Bedford].
I do not remember to have ever seen such a day
as this in Concord. There is no snow here
(though there has been excellent sleighing at
Concord since the 5th), but it is very muddy,
the frost coming out of the ground as in spring
with us.
I went to walk in the woods with R. It was
wonderfully warm and pleasant. The cockerels
WINTER. 29
crowed just as in a spring day at home. I felt
the winter breaking 1 up in me, and if I had been
at home, I should have tried to write poetry.
They told me that this was not a rare day there,
that they had little or no winter such as we have,
and it was owing to the influence of the Gulf
Stream which was only sixty miles from Nan-
tucket at the nearest, or one hundred and twenty
miles from them. In mid- winter when the wind
was S. E. or even S. W., they frequently had days
as warm and debilitating as in summer. There is
a difference of about a degree in latitude between
Concord and New Bedford, but far more in cli
mate. The American holly is quite common
there, with its red berries still holding on, and is
now their Christinas evergreen. I heard the
larks sing strong and sweet, and saw robins. . . .
R. said that pheasants from England (where
they are not indigenous) had been imported into
Naushon and are now killed there.
Dec. 26, 1855. After snow, rain, and hail
yesterday and last night, we have this morning
quite a glaze, there being at least an inch or two
of crusted snow on the ground ; the most we
have had. The sun comes out at 9 A. M. and
lights up the ice-incrusted trees. ... I go to
Walden via the almshouse and up the railroad.
Trees seen in the west against the dark cloud,
the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as
30 WINTER.
frost work, and their outlines very perfectly and
distinctly revealed, great wisps that they are and
ghosts of trees, with recurved twigs. The walls
and fences are incased, and the fields bristle
with a myriad of crystal spears. Already the
wind is rising and a brattling is heard overhead
in the street. The sun shining down a gorge
over the woods at Brister s Hill reveals a won
derfully brilliant, as well as seemingly solid and
diversified region in the air. The ice is from an
eighth to a quarter of an inch thick about the
twigs and pine needles, only one half as thick
commonly on one side. The heads of the trees
are bowed, and their plumes and needles stiff as
if preserved tinder glass for the inspection of
posterity. . . . The pines thus weighed down
are sharp-pointed at top, and remind me of firs
and even hemlocks, their drooping boughs being
wrapped about them like the folds of a cloak or
a shawl. The crust is already strewn with bits
of the green needles which have been broken off.
Frequently the whole top stands up bare, while
the middle and lower branches are drooping and
massed together, resting on one another. But
the low and spreading weeds in the fields and
the woodpaths are the most interesting. Here
are asters (savory-leaved), whose flat, imbricated
calyxes, three quarters of an inch over, are sur
mounted and inclosed in a perfectly transparent
WINTER. 31
ice button, like a glass knob, through which you
see the reflections of the brown calyx. These are
very common. Each little blue curl calyx has a
spherical button, like those over a little boy s
jacket, little sprigs of them, and the pennyroyal
has still smaller spheres more regularly arranged
about its stem, chandelier-wise, and still smells
through the ice. The finest grasses support the
most wonderful burdens of ice and most bunched
on their minute threads. These weeds are spread
and arched over into the snow again, countless
little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice,
which you break with a tinkling crash at each
step. The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen,
seen glowing through the more opaque whitish
or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection,
the richest sight of all, for the scarlet is in
creased and multiplied by reflection through the
bubbles and hemispherical surfaces of the crust,
as if it covered some vermilion grain thickly
strewn. The brown cup lichens stand in their
midst. The whole rough bark, too, is incased.
Already a squirrel has perforated the crust
above the mouth of his burrow here and there,
by the side of the path, and left some empty
acorn shells on the snow. He has shoveled out
this morning before the snow has frozen on his
doorstep. . . .
Particularly are we attracted in the winter by
32 WINTER.
greenness and signs of growth, as the green and
white shoots of grass and weeds pulled, or float
ing on the water, and also by color, as the cock-
spur lichens, crimson birds, etc.
4 P. M. Up railroad. Since the sun has risen
higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the
ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. . . .
The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles
off in the horizon, is of sharp points, the leading
shoots with a few plumes.
In a true history or biography, of how little
consequence those events of which so much is
commonly made. ... I find in my journal that
the most important events in my life, if recorded
at all, are not dated.
Dec. 26, 1858. P. M. To Jenny Dugan s.
. . . Call at a farmer s this Sunday p. M., where
I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house,
lounging in very ragged clothes, for which they
think it necessary to apologize, and one of them
is busy laying the supper table (at which he
invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold
meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on
the end of his knife, and making the tea by the
time his mother gets home from church. Thus
sincere and homely, as I am glad to know, is the
actual life of these New England men, wearing
rags indoors there which would disgrace a beg
gar (and are not beggars and paupers they who
WINTER. 33
could be disgraced so), and doing the indispen
sable work, however humble. How much better
and more humane it was than if they had im
ported and set up among their penates a headless
torso from the ruins of Ireland ! I am glad to
find that our New England life has a genuine,
humane core to it ; that inside, after all, there
is so little pretense and brag. . . . The middle-
aged son sits there in the old unpainted house
in a ragged coat, and helps his old mother about
her work when the field does not require him.
Dec. 26, 1859. P. M. Skate to Lee s Bridge.
... I see a brute with a gun in his hand stand
ing motionless over a muskrat s house which he
has destroyed. I find that he has visited every one
in the neighborhood of Fair Haven Pond, above
and below, and broken them all down, laying open
the interior to the water, and then stood watchful
close by for the poor creature to show its head
for a breath of air. There lies the red carcass
of one whose pelt he has taken on the spot,
. . . and for his afternoon s cruelty that fellow
will be rewarded with ninepence, perchance.
When I consider the opportunities of the civil
ized man for getting ninepences and getting
light, this seems to me more savage than savages
are. Depend on it that whoever thus treats the
muskrat s house, his refuge when the water is
frozen thick, he and his family will not come to
34 WINTER.
a good end. So many of these houses being
broken open, twenty or thirty I see, I look into
the open hole, and find in it, in almost every in
stance, many pieces of the white root, with the
little leaf bud curled up, which I take to be the
yellow lily root. The leaf bud unrolled has the
same scent as the yellow lily. There will be
a half dozen of these pointed buds, more or
less green, coming to a point at the end of the
root. Also I see a little coarser, what I take to
be the green leaf stalk of the .pontederia, for I
see a little of the stipule sheathing the stalk from
within it (?) ... In one hole there was a large
quantity of the root I have mentioned, its leaf
buds attached or bitten off. The root was gen
erally five or six eighths of an inch in diameter.
It must, I think, be the principal food of the
muskrat at this time. If you open twenty cab
ins you will find it in at least three quarters of
them, and nothing else unless a very little pon-
tederia leaf stem (?). By eating, or killing at
least, so many lily buds, they must thin out the
plant considerably. I saw no fresh c]am shells
in the holes and scarcely any on the ice anywhere
on the edge of open places, nor are they proba
bly deposited in a heap under the ice. It may
be, however, that the shells are opened in the
hole, and then dropped in the water near by.
Twice this winter I have noticed a muskrat
WINTER. 35
floating in a placid, smooth, open place in the
river, when it was frozen for a mile each side,
looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen
meadow, but showing its whole upper outline
from nose to end of tail, perfectly still till he ob
served me, then suddenly diving and steering
under the ice toward some cabin s entrance or
other retreat half-a-dozen or more rods off.
As some of the tales of our childhood, the in
ventions of some Mother Goose, will haunt us
when we are grown up, so the race itself still
believes in some of the fables with which its in
fancy has amused and imposed on it, e. g., the
fable of the Cranes and Pygmies which learned
men endeavored to believe or explain in the last
century.
Aristotle being almost, if not quite, the first
to write systematically on animals, gives them
of course only popular names, such as were com
mon with the hunters, fowlers, fishers, and farm
ers of his day. He used no scientific terms.
But he having the priority, and having, as it
were, created science, and given it its laws, those
popular Greek names, even when the animal to
which they were applied cannot be identified,
have been in great part preserved, and make the
learned, far-fetched, and commonly unintelligi
ble names of genera to-day, e. g., oXoOovpiov, etc.
His " History of Animals " has thus become a
very storehouse of scientific nomenclature.
36 WINTER.
Dec. 26, 1860. M sent to me yesterday
a perfect Strix Asio, or red owl of Wilson, not
at all gray. This is now generally made the
same with the Ncevia, but while some consider
the red the old, others consider it the young.
This is, as Wilson says, a bright "nut-brown."
... It is twenty-three inches alar extent by
about eleven long. Feet extend one inch be
yond tail. Cabot makes the old bird red, Au-
dubon, the young.
To such an excess have our civilization and
division of labor come that A., a professional
huckleberry picker, has hired B. s field, and we
will suppose is now gathering the crop, perhaps
with the aid of a patented machine. C., a pro
fessed cook, is superintending the cooking of
a pudding made of some of the berries, while
Professor D., for whom the pudding is intended,
sits in his library writing a book, a work on the
Vacciniese, of course. And now the result of
this downward course will be seen in that book,
which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckle
berry field, and account for the existence of the
two professors who come between D. and A. It
will be worthless. There will be none of the
spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of
it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a
homely illustration, it is to save at the spile, and
waste at the bung. I believe in a different kind
WINTER. 37
of division of labor, and that Professor D. should
divide himself between the library and the
huckleberry field.
Dec. 27, 1837. . . . The real heroes of min
strelsy have been ideal, even when the names of
actual heroes have been perpetuated. The real
Arthur, who " not only excelled the experienced
past, but also the possible future," of whom it
was affirmed, after many centuries, that he was
not dead, but " had withdrawn from the world
into some magical region from which at a future
crisis he was to reappear, and lead the Cymri
in triumph through the island," whose character
and actions were the theme of the bards of Bre-
tagne, and the foundation of their interminable
romances, was only an ideal impersonation.
Men claim for the ideal an actual existence also,
but do not often expand the actual into the
ideal. " If you do not believe me, go into Bre-
tagne, and mention in the streets and villages
that Arthur is really dead like other men.
You will not escape with impunity. You will
be either hooted with the curses of your hearers,
or stoned to death."
The most remarkable instance of home-sick
ness is that of the colony of Franks transplanted
by the Romans from the German Ocean to the
Euxine, who, at length resolving to a man to
abandon the country, seized the vessels which
38 WINTER.
carried them out, and reached at last their
native shores, after innumerable difficulties and
dangers upon the Mediterranean and the At
lantic.
Dec. 27, 1851. Sunset from Fair Haven
Hill. This evening there are many clouds in
the west into which the sun goes down, so that
we have our visible or apparent sunset and red
evening sky as much as fifteen minutes before
the real sunset. You must be early on the hills
to witness such a sunset, by half -past four at
least. Then all the vales, even to the horizon,
are full of a purple vapor which half veils the
distant mountains, and the windows of undiscov-
erable farm-houses shine like an early candle or
a fire. After the sun has gone behind a cloud,
there appears to be a gathering of clouds around
his setting, and for a few moments his light in
the amber sky seems more intense, brighter, and
purer than at noonday, . . . like the ecstasy which
we are told sometimes lights up the face of a
dying man. That is a serene or evening death,
like the end of the day. Then at last through
all the grossness which has accumulated in the
atmosphere of day is seen a patch of serene sky,
fairer by contrast with the surrounding dark than
midday, and even the gross atmosphere of the
day is gilded and made pure as amber by the
setting sun, as if the day s sins were forgiven it.
WINTER. 39
The man is blessed who every day is permitted
to behold anything so pure and serene as the
western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the
world.
There is no winter necessarily in the sky,
though snow covers the earth. The sky is al
ways ready to answer our moods. We can see
summer there or winter.
Dec. 27, 1852. Not a particle of ice in Wai-
den to-day. Paddled across it, and took my new
boat out. A black and white duck on it.
Flint s and Fair Haven frozen up. Ground
bare. River open.
Dec. 27, 1853. High wind with more snow
in the night. . . . Snowy ridges cross the vil
lage street, and make it look as wild and bleak
as a pass of the Rocky Mountains, or the Sierra
Nevada.
p. M. To Fair Haven Pond, up meadows
and river. The snow blows like spray fifteen
feet high across the fields, while the wind roars
in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is
altogether like the ocean in a storm. . . .
It is surprising what things the snow betrays.
I had not seen a meadow -mouse all summer,
but no sooner does the snow come and spread its
mantle over the earth than it is printed with
the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.
I see where the mouse has dived into a little
40 WINTER.
hole in the snow not larger than my thumb by
the side of a weed, and a yard farther reap
peared, and so on alternately above and beneath.
A snug life it lives. The crows come nearer
to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, ap
parently being put to it for food. . . .
It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless,
clear, cold, indigo-like, along the horizon. The
evening (?) star is seen shining brightly before
the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses
the eastern horizon. The outline of the moun
tains is wonderfully distinct and hard. They
are a dark blue and very near. "Wachusett looks
like a right-whale over our bow, plowing the
continent, with his flukes well down. He has a
vicious look, as if he had a harpoon in him.
I wish I could buy at the shops some kind of
India rubber that would rub out at once all
that in my writing which it costs me so many
perusals, so many months, if not years, and so
much reluctance, to erase.
Dec. 27, 1857. . . . Walden is almost en
tirely skimmed over. It will probably be com
pletely frozen over to-night.
I frequently hear a dog bark at some distance
in the night, which, strange as it may seem,
reminds me of the cooing or crowing of a ring
dove which I heard every night a year ago at
Perth Amboy. It was sure to coo on the slightest
WINTER. 41
noise in the house, as good as a watch-dog. The
crowing of cocks too reminds me of it, and now
I think of it, it had precisely the intonation and
accent of the cat-owl s ho6 hoo-hoo-o-o, in each
case, a sonorous dwelling on the last syllable.
They get the pitch and break ground with the
first note, and then prolong and swell it in the
last.
The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the
barking of a dog, produce the same effect on
fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does.
It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as
a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than
confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.
It is better that these cheap sounds be music to
us than that we have the rarest ears for music
in any other sense. I have lain awake at night
many a time to think of the barking of a dog
which I had heard long before, bathing my
being again in those waves of sound, as a fre
quenter of the opera might lie awake remember
ing the music he had heard.
As my mother made my pockets once of fa
ther s old fire bags, with the date of the forma
tion of the society on them, 1794 (though they
made but rotten pockets), so we put our mean
ing into those old mythologies. I am sure that
the Greeks were commonly innocent of any such
double entendre as we attribute to them.
42 WINTER.
One while we do not wonder that so many
commit suicide, life is so barren and worthless.
We only live on by an effort of the will. Sud
denly our condition is ameliorated, and even the
barking of a dog is a pleasure to us. So closely
is our happiness bound up with our physical
condition, and one reacts on the other.
Do not despair of your life. You have no
doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles.
Think of the fox prowling through wood and
field in a winter night for something to satisfy
his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the
hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not
believe any of them ever committed suicide. I
saw this afternoon where probably a fox had
rolled some small carcass in the snow.
I am disappointed by most essays and lec
tures. I find that I had expected the authors
would have some life, some very private expe
rience to report, which would make it compara
tively unimportant in what style they expressed
themselves, but commonly they have only a
talent to exhibit. The new magazines which all
had been expecting may contain only another
love story, as naturally told as the last, per
chance, but without the slightest novelty in it.
It may be a mere vehicle for Yankee phrases.
What interesting contrasts our climate affords
In July you rush panting into the pond to cool
WINTER. 43
yourself in the tepid water, when the stones on
the bank are so heated that you cannot hold one
tightly in your hand, and horses are melting on
the road. Now you walk on the same pond
frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and
feet, and see the water target bleached and stiff
in the ice.
Dec. 27, 1858. Talk of Fate! How little
one can know what is fated to another ! What
he can do and what he cannot do. I doubt
whether one can give or receive any very perti
nent advice. In all important crises, one can
only consult his genius. Though he were the
most shiftless and craziest of mortals, if he still
recognizes that he has any genius to consult,
none may presume to go between him and her.
They, methinks, are poor stuff and creatures of
a miserable fate who can be advised and per
suaded in very important steps. Show me a
man who consults his genius, and you have
shown me a man who cannot be advised. You
may know what a thing costs or is worth to you,
you can never know what it costs or is worth to
me. All the community may scream because
one man is born who will not conform, because
conformity to him is death. He is so consti
tuted. They know nothing about his case, they
are fools when they presume to advise him. The
man of genius knows what he is aiming at.
44 WINTER.
Nobody else knows, and he alone knows when
something comes between him and his object.
In the course of generations, however, men will
excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will
bring enough to pass in your own way.
Dec. 28, 1840. The snow hangs on the trees
as the fruit of the season. In those twigs
which the wind has preserved naked there is a
warmer green for the contrast. The whole tree
exhibits a kind of interior and household com
fort, a sheltered and covert aspect. It has the
snug inviting look of a cottage on the moors,
buried in snow. Our voices ring hollowly
through the woods as through a chamber, the
twigs crackle under foot with private and house
hold echoes. I have observed on a clear winter s
morning that the woods have their southern win
dow as well as the house, through which the
first beams of the sun stream along their aisles
and corridors. The sun goes up swiftly behind
the limbs of the white pine, as the sashes of a
window.
Dec. 28, 1852. . . . Both for bodily and
mental health court the present. Embrace
health wherever you find her. . . .
It is worth while to apply what wisdom one
has to the conduct of his life, surely. I find my
self oftenest wise in little things and foolish in
great ones. That I may accomplish some petty,
WINTER. 45
particular affair well, I live my whole life
coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beau
tiful in a man s life as in a book. Haste makes
waste no less in life than in housekeeping.
Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe,
not of the cars. What are threescore years and
ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of
divine leisure, in which your life is coincident
with the life of the universe. We live too fast
and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not
know the true savor of our food. We consult
our will and our understanding and the expecta
tion of men, not our genius. I can impose upon
myself tasks which will crush me for life and pre
vent all expansion, and this I am but too inclined
to do. Our moment of life costs many hours,
hours not of business, but of preparation and
invitation. Yet the man who does not betake
himself at once and desperately to sawing is
called a loafer, though he may be knocking at
the doors of heaven all the while, which shall
surely be opened to him. That aim in life is
highest which requires the highest and finest
discipline. How much, what infinite leisure it
requires, as of a life-time, to appreciate a single
phenomenon ! You must camp down beside it
as for life, having reached your land of promise,
and give yourself wholly to it. It must stand
for the whole world to you, symbolical of all
46 WINTER.
things. The least partialness is your own defect
of sight, and cheapens the experience fatally.
Unless the humming of a gnat is as the music
of the spheres, and the music of the spheres is as
the humming of a gnat, they are naught to me.
It is not communications to serve for a history
(which are science), but the great story itself,
that cheers and satisfies us.
Dec. 28, 1853. ... I hear and see tree spar
rows about the weeds in the garden. They
seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow,
or is it that they are more obvious against the
white ground. By their sharp, silvery chip, per
chance, they inform each other of their where
abouts and keep together.
Dec. 28, 1854. [Nan tucket.] A misty rain
as yesterday. Captain Gardiner carried me to
Siasconset in his carriage. . . . He is exten
sively engaged in raising pines on the island.
There is not a tree to be seen except such as are
set out about houses. . . . He showed me sev
eral lots of his of different sizes, one tract of
three hundred acres sown in rows with a planter,
where the young trees, two years old, were
just beginning to green the ground, and I saw
one of Norway pine and our pitch, mixed, eight
years old, which looked quite like a forest at a
distance. The Norway pines had grown the
faster, with a longer shoot, and had a bluer look
WINTER. 47
at a distance, more like the white pine The
common pitch pines have a reddish crisped look
at top. Some are sown in rows, some broad
cast. At first Captain Gardiner was alarmed
to find that the ground moles had gone along in
the furrows directly under the plants and so in
jured the roots as to kill many of the trees, and
he sowed over again. He was also discouraged
to find that a sort of spindle worm had killed
the leading shoot of a great part of his neigh
bor s older trees. These plantations must very
soon change the aspect of the island. His com
mon pitch pine seed obtained from the Cape
cost him about twenty dollars a bushel ; at least
about a dollar a quart with the wings ; and they
told him it took about eighty bushels of cones to
make one such bushel of seeds. I was surprised
to find that the Norway pine seed without the
wings imported from France had cost not quite
two dollars a bushel delivered at New York or
Philadelphia. He has ordered eight hogsheads
of the best, clear wingless seeds, at this rate. I
think he said it took about a gallon to sow an
acre. He had tried to get white pine seed, but
in vain. The cones had not contained any of
late. (?) This looks as if he meant to sow a good
part of the island, though he said he might sell
some of the seed. It is an interesting enterprise.
. . . This island must look exactly like a prairie,
48 WINTER.
except that the view in clear weather is bounded
by the sea. Saw crows and robins, also saw and
heard larks frequently, but most abundant run
ning along the ruts or circling about just over
the ground in small flocks, what the inhabitants
call snow-birds, a gray, bunting-like bird about
the size of the snow-bunting. Can it be the sea
side finch, or the savannah sparrow, or the
shore lark ? . . . A few years ago some one im
ported a dozen partridges from the main-land,
but though some were seen for a year or two,
not one had been seen for some time, and they
were thought to be extinct. Captain Gardiner
thought the raccoons, which had been very nu
merous, might have caught them. In Harrison
days some coons were imported and turned loose.
They multiplied very fast, and became quite a
pest, killing hens, etc., and were killed in turn.
Finally, people turned out and hunted them
with hounds, and killed seventy-five at one time,
since which he had not heard of any. There
were foxes once, but none now, and no indige-
ous animal bigger than a ground mole. . . .
The last Indian, not of pure blood, died this
very month, and I saw his picture with a basket
of huckleberries in his hand.
Dec. 28, 1856. I am surprised to see the
Fringilla hyemalis here. [Walden.] . . . The
fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine
WINTER. 49
wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their
eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever
and anon scanning their reels to see if any have
fallen, and if not catching many fish, still getting
what they went for, though they may not be
aware of it, i. e., a wilder experience than the
town affords. . . .
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a
companion only one day in a week, unless it
were one or two I could name, I find that the
value of the week to me has been seriously
affected. It dissipates my days, and often it
takes me another week to get over it. As the
Esquimaux of Smith s Strait in North Green
land laughed when Kane warned them of their
utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice
on all sides from the race, unless they attempted
in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I
laugh when you tell me of the danger of impov
erishing myself by isolation. It is here that the
walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the
eider ducks and auks on which I batten, most
abound.
Dec. 28, 1858. p. M. To Walden. The
earth is bare. I walk about the pond looking at
the shores, since I have not paddled about it
much of late years. What a grand place for a
promenade ! . . . That rocky shore under the
pitch pines, which so reflects the light, is only
50 WINTER.
three feet wide by one foot high, yet there
even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge,
and just off this shore the pickerel are most
abundant. This is the warm and sunny side to
which any one, man, bird, or quadruped, would
soonest resort in cool weather. I noticed a few
chickadees there in the edge of the pines in the
sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one
another with a reference to me, I think, the
cunning and innocent little birds. One a little
farther off utters the phoebe note. There is a
foot, more or less, of clear, open water at the
edge here, and seeing this, one of these birds
hops down, as if glad to find any open water at
this season, and after prinking, it stands in the
water on a stone, up to its belly, and dips its
head, and flirts the water about vigorously,
giving itself a good washing. I had not ex
pected this at this season. No fear that it will
catch cold. The ice cracks suddenly with a
shivering jar, like crockery or the brittlest mate
rial, such as it is, and I notice, as I sit here at
this open edge, that each time the ice cracks,
though it may be a good distance off toward the
middle, the water here is very much agitated.
The ice is about six inches thick.
Dec. 29, 1840. As echo makes me enunci
ate distinctly, so the sympathy of a friend
gives plainness and point to my speech. This
is the advantage of letter-writing.
WINTER. 51
Dec. 29, 1841. . . . Whole weeks or months
of my summer life slide away in thin volumes
like mists or smoke, till at length some warm
morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown
down the brook to the swamp, its shadow flitting
across the fields which have caught a new signifi
cance from that accident, and as that vapor is
raised above the earth, so shall the next weeks
be elevated above the plane of the actual ; or a
like experience may come when the setting sun
slants across the pastures, and the cows low to my
inward ear, and only enhance the stillness, and
the eve is as the dawn, a beginning hour and not
a final one, as if it would never have done, with
its clear, western amber, inciting men to lives of
limpid purity. At evening, other parts of my
work shine than I had thought at noon, and I
discover the real purport of my toil as when the
husbandman has reached the end of the furrow
and looks back, he can best tell where the
pressed earth shines most. . . .
A man should go out of Nature with the chirp
of the cricket or the trill of the veery singing
in his ear. These earthly sounds should only
die away for a season, as the strains of the harp
rise and fall. Death is that expressive pause in
the music of the blast. I would be as clean as
ye, O Woods. I shall not rest till I am as inno
cent as you. I know that I shall sooner or later
52 WINTER.
attain to an unspotted innocence, for when I
consider that state even now I am thrilled.
If we were wise enough, we should see to
what virtue we were indebted for any happier
moment we might have. No doubt we had
earned this at some time.
These motions everywhere in Nature must
surely be the circulations of God ; . . . the run
ning stream, the waving tree, the roving wind,
whence else their infinite health and freedom.
I can see nothing so holy as unrelaxed play and
frolic in this bower God has built for us. The
suspicion of sin never comes to this experience.
If men felt this they would never build temples
even of marble or diamond (it would be sacri
lege and profane), but disport them forever in
this paradise. . . .
It seems as if only one trait, one little inci
dent in human biography need to be said or
written in some era, that all readers may go
mad after it, and the man who did the miracle
is made a demigod henceforth. What we all
do, not one can tell, and when some lucky
speaker utters a truth of our experience and not
of our speculation, we think he must have had
the nine Muses and the three Graces to help
him.
Dec. 29, 1851. The sun just risen. The
ground is almost entirely bare. ... It is warm as
WINTER. 53
an April morning. There is a sound of blue
birds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the
spring. The steam curls up from the roofs and
the ground. You walk with open cloak. It is
exciting to behold the smooth, glassy surface of
water where the melted snow has formed large
puddles and ponds, and to see it running in the
sluices. ... In the afternoon to Saw mill brook
with W. E. C. . . . It feels as warm as in sum
mer. You sit on any fence rail and vegetate in
the sun, and realize that the earth may produce
peas again. Yet they say that this open and
mild weather is unhealthy. That is always the
way with them. How admirable it is that we
can never foresee the weather, that it is always
novel. Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day.
Nobody dreams of to-morrow. Hence the
weather is ever the news. . . . This day yester
day was as incredible as any other miracle.
Now all creatures feel it, even the cattle chew
ing stalks in the barn-yards, and perchance it
has even penetrated to the lurking places of the
crickets under the rocks.
Dec. 29, 1853. ... A driving snow-storm
all day, imprisoning most, stopping the cars,
blocking up the roads. . . . The snow pene
trates through the smallest crevices about doors
and windows. ... It is the worst snow-storm
to bear that I remember. A strong wind from
54 WINTER.
the north blows the snow almost horizontally,
and beside freezing you, almost takes your
breath away. The driving snow blinds you,
and when you are protected, you can see but a
little way, it is so thick. Yet in spite of or on
account of it all, I see the first flock of arctic
snow-birds, Emberiza nivalis, near the depot,
white and black, with a sharp whistle-like note.
What a contrast between the village street
now and as it was last summer ; the leafy elms
then resounding with the warbling vireo, robins,
bluebirds, the fiery hangbird, etc., to which the
villagers, kept in doors by the heat, listened
through open lattices. Now it is like a street in
Nova Zembla, if they were to have any there.
I wade to the post office as solitary a traveler as
ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. The snow
is mid-leg deep, while drifts as high as one s
head are heaped against the houses and fences,
and here and there range across the street like
snowy mountains. . . . There is not a track
leading from any door to indicate that the in
habitants have been forth to-day, any more than
there is the track of any quadruped by the wood-
paths. It is all pure, untrodden snow, banked
up against the houses now at 4 p. M. ... In
one place the drift covers the front yard fence,
and stretches thence upward to the top of the
front door, shutting all in. . . . Frequently the
WINTER. 55
snow lies banked up three or four feet high
against the front doors, . . . there is a drift over
each window, and the clapboards are all hoary
with it. It is as if the inhabitants were all
frozen to death, and now you threaded the deso
late streets, weeks after that calamity. There
is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the
Milldam ; but one saddled horse on which a
farmer has come into town. . . . Yet they are
warmer, merrier than ever there within. At
the post office they ask each traveler news of
the cars, is there any train up or down, how
deep the snow is on a level.
Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they
appear in the northern parts of the United
States "early in December, or with the first
heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high
winds." This day answers to that description
exactly. The wind is northerly. He adds that,
" they are universally considered as the harbin
gers of severe cold weather." They come down
from the extreme north, and are common to the
two continents. He quotes Pennant as saying
that they " inhabit not only Greenland, but even
the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen where veg
etation is nearly extinct, and scarcely any but
cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore
excites wonder how birds which are graminivor
ous in every other than those frost-bound regions
56 WINTER.
subsist ; yet are there found in great flocks, both
on the land and ice of Spitzbergen." Pennant
also says that they inhabit in summer " the most
naked Lapland Alps," and " descend in rigor
ous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads
and fields," on which account the uplanders call
them " liardwarsfogel" hard weather-birds ; he
also -says, " they overflow [in winter] the more
southern counties in amazing multitudes." Wil
son says their colors are very variable, "and
the whiteness of their plumage is observed to be
greatest toward the depth of winter." He also
says truly that they seldom sit long, " being a
roving, restless bird." Peabody says that in
summer they are " pure white and black," but
are not seen of that color here. Those I saw
to-day were of that color. . . . Pie says they
are white and rusty brown here. These are the
true winter birds for you, these winged snow
balls. I could hardly see them, the air was so
full of driving snow. What hardy creatures !
Where do they spend the night ? . . .
The farmer considers how much pork he has
in his barrel, how much meal in his bin, how
much wood in his shed. Each family, perchance,
sends forth one representative before night, who
makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or
the post office to learn the news, i. e., to hear
what others say to it, who can give the best ac-
WINTER. 57
count of it, best can name it, has waded farthest
in it, has been farthest out, and can tell the big
gest and most adequate story, and hastens back
with the news. . . .
The thoughts and associations of summer and
autumn are now as completely departed from our
minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.
Some withered deciduous ones are left to rus
tle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some
lichenous thoughts still adhere to us.
Dec. 29, 1855. Down railroad to Androme-
don Ponds. ... I see a shrike flying low be
neath the level of the railroad, which rises and
alights on the topmost twig of an elm within
four or five rods. All ash or bluish slate above,
down to mid-wings, dirty white breast, and a
broad black mark through eyes on side of head ;
primaries (?) black, and some white appears
when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked
bill (upper mandible). It makes no sound, but
flits to the top of an oak farther off. Probably
a male.
Dec. 29, 1856. P. M. To Warren Miles s
Mill. We must go out and re-ally ourselves to
Nature every day. We must make root, send out
some little fibre at least, even every winter day.
I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I
open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the
house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every
58 WINTER.
house is, in this sense, a sort of hospital. A
night and a forenoon is as much confinement to
those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I
recover some sanity, which I had lost, almost the
instant that I come abroad.
Dec. 29, 1858. P. M. Skate to Israel Kice s.
I think more of skates than of the horse or loco
motive as annihilators of distance, for while I
am getting along with the speed of the horse, I
have at the same time the satisfactions of the
horse and his rider, and far more adventure and
variety than if I were riding. We never cease
to be surprised when we see how swiftly the
skater glides along. Just compare him with one
walking or running. The walker is but a snail
in comparison, and the runner gives up the con
test after a few rods. The skater can afford to
follow all the windings of a stream, and yet soon
leaves far behind and out of sight the walker
who cuts across. Distance is hardly an obstacle
to him. . . . The skater has wings, talaria to
his feet. Moreover, you have such perfect con
trol of your feet that you can take advantage of
the narrowest and most winding and sloping
bridge of ice in order to pass between the but
ton bushes and the open stream, or under a
bridge on a narrow shelf where the walker can
not go at all. You can glide securely within an
inch of destruction on this, the most slippery of
WINTER. 59
surfaces, more securely than you could walk there
perhaps on any other material. You can pursue
swiftly the most intricate and winding path,
even leaping obstacles that suddenly present
themselves. . . .
H H was fishing a quarter of a mile
this side of Hubbard s Bridge. He had caught
a pickerel . . . twenty-six inches long, ... a
very handsome fish. Dark brown above, yel
low and brown on the side, becoming at length
almost a clear golden yellow low down, with
a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are
handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water
and the tigers in the jungle. What tragedies
are enacted under this dumb, icy platform in
the fields ! What an anxious and adventurous
life the small fishes must live, liable at any
moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish
of moderate size can go stealing along safely in
any part of the stream but suddenly there may
come rushing out from this jungle or that, some
greedy monster and gulp him down. Parent
fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can
they trust them abroad out of their sight.
It takes so many fishes a week to fill the
maw of this large one. And the large ones!
H H and company are lying in wait
for them.
Dec. 29, 1859. Very cold morning. About
60 WINTER.
15 at 8 A. M. at our door. I went to the river
immediately after sunrise ; could see a little
greenness in the ice, and also a little rose color
from the snow, but far less than before sunset.
Do both these phenomena then require a gross
atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest
when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above
the horizon.
From [a] smooth open place ... a great deal
of vapor was rising, to the height of a dozen feet
or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is
a phenomenon of quite cold weather. I did not
notice it yesterday P. M. These open places are
a sort of breathing holes of the river. . . . Just
as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still
greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e., warm,
moist air over the river. ... p. M. ... When
I went to walk it was about 10 above zero, and
when I returned 1+. I did not notice any
vapor rising from the open places as I did in the
morning when it was 16 and also when it was
6 . . . . When the air is, say 4 or 5 below
zero, the water being 32-f-, then there is a visi
ble evaporation. Is there the same difference, or
some 40 between the heat of the human breath
and that of the air in which the moisture in the
breath becomes visible in vapor. This has to do
with the dew point. Next, what makes the
water of those open places thus warm ? and is it
WINTER. 61
any warmer than elsewhere ? There is consider
able heat reflected from a sandy bottom where the
water is shallow, and at these places it is always
sandy and shallow, but I doubt if this actually
makes the water warmer, though it may melt the
more opaque ice which absorbs it. The fact that
Holt bend, which is deep, is late to freeze, being
narrow, seems to prove it to be the swiftness of
the water, and not reflected heat that prevents
freezing. The water is apparently kept warm
under the ice and down next to the unfrozen
earth, and by a myriad springs from within
the bowels of the earth.
Dec. 30, 1840. . . . Our Golden Age must
after all be a pastoral one ; we would be simple
men in ignorance, and not accomplished in wis
dom. We want great peasants more than great
heroes. The sun would shine along the high
way to some purpose, if we would unlearn our
wisdom and practice illiterate truth henceforth.
. . . Let us grow to the full stature of our hum
bleness ere we aspire to be greater. It is great
praise in the poet [Virgil] to have made hus
bandry famous.
" In the cool spring, when cool moisture from the hoary
mountains flows,
And the mouldering clod is dissolved by the zephyr,
Then straightway let the bull with deep-pressed plow begin
To groan, and the share, worn by the furrow, to shine."
Georg. i. 43.
62 WINTER.
And again when the husbandman conducts
water down the slope to restore his thirsty crops,
" That, falling, makes a hoarse murmur among the smooth
rocks, and tempers the parching fields with its bubbling
streams. " Ibid. 109.
Describing the end of the Golden Age and the
commencement of the reign of Jupiter, he says :
He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire,
And stayed the wine everywhere flowing in rivers
That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts
By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows,
And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint."
Ibid. 131.
Dec. 30, 1841. . . .
Within the circuit of this plodding life
There are moments of an azure hue,
... as unpolluted, fair, as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some south wood side ; which make
The best philosophy . . . untrue.
... to console man for his grievance here,
I have remembered, when the winter came,
High in my chamber, in the frosty nights,
How, in the summer past, some
Unrecorded beam, slanted across
. . . [an] upland pasture where the Johnswort grew,
Or heard, amidst the verdure of my mind,
The bee s long smothered hum ;
So, by the cheap economy of God,
Made rich to go upon my wintry work again.
When the snow is falling thick and fast, the
flakes nearest you seem to be driving straight
to the ground, while the more distant seem to
WINTER. 63
float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers,
or like birds at play, and not as if sent on any
errand. So, at a little distance, all the works
of nature proceed with sport and frolic. They
are more in the eye, and less in the deed.
Dec. 30, 1851. . . . This afternoon, being
on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a
saw, and soon after from the cliff saw two men
sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty
rods off, . . . the last of a dozen or more which
were left when the forest was cut, and for fifteen
years have waved in solitary majesty over the
sproutland. I saw them like beavers or insects
gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the
diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw
which could scarcely span it. It towered up a
hundred feet, as I afterwards found by measure
ment, one of the tallest probably in the town
ship, and straight as an arrow, but slanting a
little toward the hillside, its top seen against
the frozen river and the hill of Conantum. I
watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now
the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little
on the side toward which it leans, that it may
break the faster, and now their saw goes again.
Now surely it is going ; it is inclined one quar
ter of the quadrant, and breathless I expect its
crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken. It has
not moved an inch. It stands at the same
64 WINTER.
angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its
fall. Still its branches wave in the wind as if
it were destined to stand for a century, and the
wind soughs through its needles as of yore ; it
is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that
waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen
of the sunlight is reflected from its needles, it
still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squir
rel s nest, not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like
stem, its raking mast ; the hill is the hulk. Now,
now is the moment, the manikins at its base
are fleeing from their crime. They have
dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly
and majestically it starts, as if it were only
swayed by a summer breeze, and would return
without a sigh to its location in the air, and
now it fans the hillside with its fall, and lies
down to its bed in the valley from which it is
never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its
green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired
of standing, it embraced the earth with silent
joy, returning its elements to the dust again.
But, hark ! . . . you only saw, you did not
hear. There now comes up a deafening crash
to these rocks, advertising you that even trees
do not die without a groan. . . . I went down
and measured it. It was four feet in diameter
where it was sawed, and about a hundred feet
long. Before I had reached it, the axemen had
WINTER. 65
already half divested it of its branches. Its
gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on
the hillside, as if it had been made of glass, and
the tender cones of one year s growth upon its
summit appealed in vain and too late to the
mercy of the chopper. Already he has meas
ured it with his axe, and marked off the small
logs it will make. It is lumber. . . . When the
fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the
Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his
accustomed perch, and the hen hawk will mourn
for the pines lofty enough to protect his brood.
... I hear no knell tolled, I see no procession
of mourners in the streets or the woodland
aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree,
the hawk has circled farther off, and has now
settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is
preparing to lay his axe at the root of that also.
Dec. 30, 1853. In winter every man is, to
a slight extent, dormant, just as some animals
are but partially awake, though not commonly
classed with those that hibernate. The summer
circulations are to some extent stopped, the
range of his afternoon walk is somewhat nar
rower, he is more or less confined to the high
way and woodpath ; the weather oftener shuts
him up in his burrow, he begins to feel the
access of dormancy, and to assume the spherical
form of the marmot, the nights are longest, he
66 WINTER.
is often satisfied if he only gets to the post office
in the course of the day. The arctic voyagers
are obliged to invent and willfully engage in
active amusements to keep themselves awake
and alive. . . . Even our experience is some
thing like wintering in the pack.
Dec. 30, 1856. What an evidence it is,
after all, of civilization, or of a capacity for im
provement, that savages like our Indians, who, in
their protracted wars, stealthily slay men, women,
and children without mercy, with intense pleas
ure, who delight to burn, torture, and devour
one another, proving themselves more inhuman
in these respects even than beasts, what a won
derful evidence it is, I say, of their capacity for
improvement, that even they can enter into the
most formal compact or treaty of peace, burying
the hatchet, etc., and treating with each other
with as much consideration as the most enlight
ened states. You would say that they had a
genius for diplomacy as well as for war. Con
sider that Iroquois, torturing his captive, roast
ing him before a slow fire, biting off the fingers
of him alive, and finally eating the heart of him
dead, betraying not the slightest evidence of
humanity, and now behold him in the council
chamber where he meets the representatives of
the hostile nation to treat of peace, conducting
with such perfect dignity and decorum, betraying
WINTER. 67
such a sense of justice. These savages are equal
to us civilized men in their treaties, and I fear
not essentially worse in their wars.
Dec. 30, 1859. . . . p. M. Going by D s
I see a shrike perched on the tip top of the top
most, upright twig of an English cherry-tree be
fore his house, standing square on the topmost
bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his
tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit
of the bird before. You would suppose it incon
venient for so large a bird to maintain its foot
ing there. Scared by my passing in the road
he flew off, and I thought I would see if he
alighted in a similar place. He flew toward a
young elm, whose higher twigs were much more
slender, though not quite so upright as those of
the cherry, and I thought he might be excused
if he alighted on the side of one ; but no, to my
surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon
the very top of one of the highest of all, and
looked around as before. . . .
What a different phenomenon a muskrat now
from what it is in summer. Now, if one floats
or swims, its whole back out, or crawls out upon
the ice at one of those narrow oval water spaces,
some twenty rods long (in calm weather, smooth
mirrors), in a broad frame of white ice or yet
whiter snow, it is seen at once, as conspicuous
(or more so) as a fly on a window-pane or a
68 WINTER.
mirror. But in summer, how many hundreds
crawl along the weedy shore, or plunge in the
long river unsuspected by the boatman I
Dec. 30, 1860. ... It is remarkable how
universally, as respects soil and exposure, the
whortleberry family is distributed with us. One
kind or another flourishes in every soil and
locality. The Pennsylvania and Canada blue
berries especially in elevated, cool, and airy
places, on hills and mountains, in openings in
the woods and in sproutlands, the high blueberry
in swamps, and the low blueberry in intermedi
ate places, or almost anywhere but in swamps
hereabouts. The family thus ranges from the
highest mountain tops to the lowest swamps, and
forms the prevailing shrub of a great part of
New England. Not only is this true of the
family, but hereabouts of the genus, Gaylus-
sacia, or the huckleberry proper, alone. I do not
know of a spot where any shrub grows in this
neighborhood, but one or another species or
variety of the Gaylussacia may also grow there.
. . . Such care has nature taken to furnish to
birds and quadrupeds, and to men, a palatable
berry of this kind, slightly modified by soil and
climate, wherever the consumer may chance to
be. Corn and potatoes, apples and pears have
comparatively a narrow range, but we can fill
our basket with whortleberries on the summit
WINTER. 69
of Mt. Washington, above almost all the shrubs
with which we are familiar, the same kind which
they have in Greenland, and again, when we
get home, in the lowest swamps, with a kind
which the Greenlander never found. First,
there is the early, dwarf blueberry, the smallest
of the whortleberry shrubs, the first to ripen its
fruit, not commonly erect, but more or less
reclined, often covering the earth with a sort of
dense matting. The twigs are green, the flowers
commonly white. Both the shrub and its fruit
are the most tender and delicate of any that we
have. The Vaccinium Canadense may be consid
ered a more northern form of the same. Some
ten days later comes the high blueberry, or
swamp blueberry, the commonest stout shrub of
our swamps, of which I have been obliged to
cut down not a few, when running lines in sur
veying through the low woods. They are a
pretty sure indication of water, and when I see
their dense curving tops ahead, I prepare to
wade or for a wet foot. The flowers have an
agreeable, sweet, and very promising fragrance,
and a handful of them plucked and eaten have
a subacid taste agreeable to some palates. At
the same time with the last, the common low
blueberry is ripe. This is an upright slender
shrub, with a few long, wand-like branches,
with green bark and glaucous green leaves, its
70 WINTER.
recent shoots crimson-colored. The flowers have
a considerably rosy tinge, a delicate tint. The
last two kinds are more densely flowered than
the others. The huckleberry is an upright
shrub, more or less stout according to its expo
sure to the sun and air, with a spreading, bushy
top, a dark brown bark and thick leaves, the
recent shoots red. The flowers are much more
red than those of the others.
As in old times they who dwelt on the heath,
remote from towns, were backward to adopt the
doctrines which prevailed there, and were there
fore called heathen, so we dwellers in the huckle
berry pastures, which are our heathlands, are slow
to adopt the notions of large towns and cities,
and may perchance be nicknamed huckleberry
people. But the worst of it is that the emis
saries of the towns care more for our berries
than we for their doctrines. In those days the
very race had got a bad name, and ethnicus was
only another name for heathen.
All our hills are or have been huckleberry
hills, the three hills of Boston, and no doubt
Bunker Hill among the rest.
In May and June all our hills and fields are
adorned with a profusion of the pretty little,
more or less bell-shaped flowers of this family,
commonly turned toward the earth, and more or
less tinged with red or pink, and resounding
WINTER. 71
with the hum of insects, each one the forerun
ner of a berry the most natural, wholesome, and
palatable that the soil can produce. The early
low blueberry, which I will call " bluet," adopt
ing the name from the Canadians, is probably
the prevailing kind of whortleberry in New
England, for the high blueberry and huckle
berry are unknown in many sections.
In many New Hampshire towns, a neighboring
mountain top is the common berry field of many
villages, and in the season such a summit will
be swarming with pickers. A hundred at once
will rush thither from the surrounding villages,
O O "
with pails and buckets of all descriptions, espe
cially on a Sunday, which is their leisure day.
When camping on such ground, thinking my
self out of the world, I have had my solitude
very unexpectedly interrupted by such a com
pany, and found that week days were the only
Sabbath days there. . . . The mountain tops
of New Hampshire, often lifted above the
clouds, are thus covered with this beautiful blue
fruit in greater profusion than any garden.
What though the woods be cut down. This
emergency was long ago foreseen and provided
for by nature, and the interregnum is not allowed
to be a barren one. She is full of resources,
and not only begins instantly to heal that scar,
but she consoles and refreshes us with fruits
72 WINTER.
such as the forest did not produce. ... As the
sandal wood is said to diffuse its perfume around
the woodman who cuts it, so, in this case, Nature
rewards with unexpected fruits the hand that
lays her waste.
Dec. 31, 1837. As the least drop of wine
tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of
truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated,
or simply added as treasure to our stock. When
any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn
anew what we thought we knew before.
Dec. 31, 1840. . . . There must be respira
tion as well as aspiration. We should not walk
on tiptoe, but healthily expand to our full cir
cumference on the soles of our feet. ... If
aspiration be repeated long without respiration,
it will be no better than expiration, or simply
losing one s breath. In the healthy, for every
aspiration there will be a respiration which is
to make his idea take shape, and give its tone to
the character. Every time he steps buoyantly
up, he steps solidly down again, and stands the
firmer on the ground for his independence of
it. We should fetch the whole heel, sole, and
toe horizontally down to earth. Let not ours
be a wiped virtue, as men go about with an
array of clean linen, but unwashed as a fresh
flower, not a clean Sunday garment, but better
as a soiled week-day one.
WINTER. 73
Dec. 31, 1850. . . . The blue jays evidently
notify each other of the presence of an intruder,
and will sometimes make a great chattering
about it, and so communicate the alarm to other
birds, and to beasts.
Dec. 31, 1851. The third warm day ; now
overcast and beginning to drizzle. Still it is
inspiriting as the brightest weather, though the
sun surely is not going to shine. There is
a latent light in the mist, as if there were more
electricity than usual in the air. There are
warm, foggy days in winter which excite us.
It reminds me, this thick, spring-like weather,
that I have not enough valued and attended to
the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter
skies. . . . Shall I ever in summer evenings
see so celestial a reach of blue sky contrasting
with amber as I saw a few days since. The
day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the
night sky in which the stars shine and twinkle
so brightly in this latitude.
I am too late, perhaps, to see the sand foliage
in the deep cut ; should have been there day
before yesterday. It is now too wet and soft.
Yet in some places it is perfect. I see some
perfect leopard s paws. These things suggest
that there is motion in the earth as well as on
the surface; it lives and grows. ... I seem
to see some of the life that is in the spring bud
74 WINTER.
and blossom, more intimately, nearer its foun
tain head, the fancy sketches and designs of the
artist. It is more simple and primitive growth ;
as if for ages sand and clay might have thus
flowed into the forms of foliage, before plants
were produced to clothe the earth. . . .
I observed this afternoon the old Irish woman
at the shanty in the woods, sitting out on the
hillside bare-headed in the rain, and on the icy,
though thawing ground, knitting. She comes
out like the ground squirrel, at the least intima
tion of warmer weather, while I walk still in a
great coat, and under an umbrella. She will
not have to go far to be buried, so close she lives
to the earth. Such Irish as these are natural
izing themselves at a rapid rate, and threaten at
last to displace the Yankees, as the latter have
the Indians. The process of acclimation is
rapid with them. They draw long breaths in
the American sick-room. . . . There is a low
mist in the woods. It is a good day to study
lichens. The view so confined, it compels your
attention to near objects, and the white back
ground reveals the disks of the lichens dis
tinctly. They appear more loose, flowing, ex
panded, flattened out, the colors brighter for the
damp. The round, greenish-yellow lichens on
the white pines loom through the mist (or are
seen dimly) like shields whose devices you
WINTER. 75
would fain read. The trees appear all at once
covered with the crop of lichens and mosses of
all kinds. . . . This is their solstice, and your
eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things
only. On every fallen twig even, that has lain
under the snows, as well as on the trees, they
appear erect, and now first to have attained
their full expansion. Nature has a day for
each of her creations. To-day it is an exhi
bition of lichens at Forest Hall. The livid
green of some, the fruit of others, they eclipse
the trees they cover ; the red, club-shaped
(baobab tree-like), on the stumps, the erythrean
stumps ; ah, beautiful is decay. True, as Thales
said, the world was made out of water. That
is the principle of all things.
I do not lay myself open to my friends ? The
owner of the casket locks it and unlocks it.
Treat your friends for what you know them to
be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they
did but what they intended. Be sure, as you
know them, you are known of them again. Last
night I treated my dearest friend ill. Though
I could find some excuse for myself, it is not
such excuse as under the circumstances could be
pleaded in so many words. Instantly, I blamed
myself, and sought an opportunity to make
atonement, but the friend avoided me, and with
kinder feelings even than before I was obliged
76 WINTER.
to depart. And now this morning I feel that
it is too late to speak of the trifle, and besides I
doubt now, in the cool morning, if I have a
right to suppose such intimate and serious rela
tions as afford a basis for the apology I had con
ceived, for even magnanimity must ask this poor
earth for a field. The virtues even wait for in
vitation. Yet I am resolved to know that one
centrally, through thick and thin, and though
we should be cold to one another, though we
should never speak to one another, I will know
that inward and essential love may exist under
a superficial coldness, and that the laws of at
traction speak louder than words. My true re
lation this instant shall be my apology for my
false relation the last instant. I made haste to
cast off my injustice as scurf. I own it less
than another. I have absolutely done with it.
Let the idle and wavering and apologizing friend
appropriate it. Methinks our estrangement is
only like the divergence of the branches which
unite in the stem.
To-night I heard Mrs. lecture on woman
hood. The most important fact about the lec
ture was that a woman gave it, and in that re
spect it was suggestive. Went to see her after
ward. But the interview added nothing to the
impression, rather subtracted from it. She was
a woman in the too common sense, after all.
WINTER. 11
You had to fire small charges. I did not have
a finger in once, for fear of blowing away all
her works, and so ending the game. You had
to substitute courtesy for sense and argument.
It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling
to sustain a conversation with a lady. I carried
her lecture for her in my pocket wrapped in her
handkerchief. My pocket exhales cologne to
this moment. The championess of woman s
rights still asks you to be a ladies man. I can t
fire a salute for fear some of the guns may be
shotted. I had to unshot all the guns in truth s
battery, and fire powder and wadding only.
Certainly the heart is only for rare occasions ;
the intellect affords the most unfailing entertain
ment. It would only do to let her feel the wind
of the ball. I fear that to the last, women s lec
tures will demand mainly courtesy from men. . . .
Denuded pines stand in the clearings with
no old cloak to wrap about them, only the
apexes of their cones entire, telling a pathetic
story of the companions that clothed them. So
stands a man. His clearing around him, he has
no companions on the hills. The lonely trav
eler, looking up, wonders why he was left when
his companions were taken.
Dec. 31, 1853. ... It is a remarkable sight,
this snow-clad landscape, the fences and bushes
half-buried, and the warm sun on it. ... The
78 WINTER.
town and country is now so still, no rattle of
wagons nor even jingle of sleigh bells, every
tread being as with woolen feet. ... In such a
day as this, the crowing of a cock is heard very
far and distinctly. . . . There are a few sounds
still which never fail to affect me, the notes of a
wood thrush and the sound of a vibrating chord.
These affect me as many sounds once did often,
and as almost all should. The .strain of the
a3olian harp and of the wood thrush are the
truest and loftiest preachers that I know now
left on this earth. I know of no missionaries
to us heathen comparable to them. They, as it
were, lift us up in spite of ourselves. They in
toxicate and charm us. Where was that strain
mixed, into which this world was dropped, but
as a lump of sugar, to sweeten the draught ? I
would be drunk, drunk, drunk, dead drunk to
this world with it forever. He that hath ears,
let him hear. The contact of sound with a hu
man ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired
is coincident with an ecstasy. Sugar is not so
sweet to the palate as sound to a healthy ear.
The hearing of it makes men brave. . . . These
things alone remind me of my immortality,
which is else a fable. As I hear, I realize and
see clearly what at other times I only dimly
remember. I get the value of the earth s ex
tent and the sky s depth. It ... gives me the
WINTER. 79
freedom of all bodies, of all nature. I leave
my body in a trance, and accompany the zephyr
and the fragrance.
Walden froze completely over last night. It is,
however, all snow-ice, as it froze while it was
snowing hard. It looks like frozen yeast some
what. I waded about in the woods through the
snow, which certainly averaged considerably
more than two feet deep where I went. . . .
Saw probably an otter s track, very broad and
deep, as if a log had been drawn along. It was
nearly as obvious as a man s track ; made be
fore last night s snow fell. The creature from
time to time went beneath the snow for a few
feet to the leaves. This animal I should prob
ably never see the least trace of were it not for
the snow, the great revealer.
I saw some squirrels nests of oak leaves high
in the trees, and directly after a gray squirrel
tripping along the branches of an oak and shak
ing down the snow. He ran down the oak on
the side opposite from me over the snow and up
another tall and slender oak, also on the side
opposite from me which was bare, and leaped
down about four feet into a white pine, and
then ran up still higher into its thick green top
and clung behind the main stem, perfectly still.
. . . This he did to conceal himself, though
obliged to corne nearer to me to accomplish it.
80 WINTER.
His fore feet make but one track in the snow,
about three inches broad, and his hind feet an
other similar one, a foot or more distant, and
there are two sharp furrows forward, and two
slighter ones backward from each track. This
track he makes when running, but I am not
absolutely certain that all the four feet do not
come together. There were many holes in the
snow where he had gone down to the leaves and
brought up acorns, which he had eaten on the
nearest twig, dropping fine bits of shell about on
the snow, and also bits of lichen and bark. I
noticed the bits of acorn shells, etc., by the holes
in many places. At times he made a continu
ous narrow trail in the snow, somewhat like a
small muskrat, where he had walked or gone
several times, and he would go under a few feet
and come out again.
Dec. 31, 1854. p. M. On river to Fair
Haven Pond. A beautiful, clear, not very cold
day. The shadows on the snow are indigo blue.
The pines look very dark. The white-oak leaves
are a cinnamon color, the black and red (?) oak
leaves a reddish-brown or leather color. ... A
partridge rises from the alders and skims across
the river at its widest part, just before me ; a
fine sight. . . . How glorious the perfect still
ness and peace of the winter landscape.
Dec. 31, 1859. . . . How vain to try to
WINTER. 81
teach youth or anybody truths. They can
only learn them after their own fashion, and
when they get ready. I do not mean by this to
condemn our system of education, but to show
what it amounts to. A hundred boys at college
are drilled in physics, metaphysics, languages,
etc. There may be one or two in each hundred,
prematurely old, perchance, who approach the
subject from a similar point of view to their
teachers , but as for the rest and the most prom
ising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many
Indians. They get a valuable drilling, it may
be, but they do not learn what you profess to
teach. They at most only learn where the
arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use
any of its weapons. The young men, being
young, necessarily listen to the lecturer on his
tory, just as they do to the singing of a bird.
They expect to be affected by something he may
say. It is a kind of poetic pabulum and imagery
that they get. Nothing comes quite amiss to
their mill.
Jan. 1, 1841. All, men and women, woo one.
There is a fragrance in their breath.
" Nosque equis oriens afflavit anhelis."
And if now they hate, I muse as in sombre,
cloudy weather, not despairing of the absent ray.
" Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper."
82 WINTER.
Jan. 1, 1842. . . . The virtuous soul pos
sesses a fortitude and hardihood which not the
grenadier nor pioneer can match. It never
shrinks. It goes singing to its work. Effort is
its relaxation. The rude pioneer work of the
world has been done by the most devoted wor
shipers of beauty. ... In winter is their cam
paign. They never go into quarters. They are
elastic under the heaviest burden, under the
extremest physical suffering.
Jan. 1, 1852. . . . I have observed that one
mood is the natural critic of another. When
possessed with a strong feeling on any subject
foreign to the one I may be writing on, I know
very well what of good and what of bad I have
written on the latter. It looks to me now as it
will ten years hence. My life is then earnest,
and will tolerate no makeshifts nor nonsense.
What is tinsel, or euphuism, or irrelevant is re
vealed to such a touchstone. In the light of a
strong feeling all things take their places, and
truth of every kind is seen as such. Now let me
read my verses, and I will tell you if the god
has had a hand in them. I wish to survey my
composition for a moment from the least favor
able point of view. I wish to be translated to
the future, and look at my work as it were at a
structure on the plain, to observe what portions
have crumbled under the influence of the ele
ments.
WINTER. 83
9.30 P. M. To Fair Haven. Moon little
more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. It
is a remarkably warm night for the season,
the ground almost entirely bare. The stars are
dazzlingly bright. The fault may be in my own
barrenness, but methinks there is a certain pov
erty about the winter night s sky. The stars of
higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling,
and therefore appear more near and numerable ;
while those that appear indistinct and infinitely
remote in the summer, giving the impression of
unfathomableness in the sky, are scarcely seen
at all. The front halls of heaven are so bril
liantly lighted that they quite eclipse the more
remote. The sky has fallen many degrees.
The worst kind of tick to get under your
skin is yourself in an irritable mood. . . .
These are some of the differences between this
and the autumn or summer night : the stiffened
glebe under my feet, the dazzle and seeming
nearness of the stars, the duller gleam from
ice on rivers and ponds, the white spots in the
fields and streaks by the wall sides where are
the remains of drifts yet unmelted. Perhaps
the only thing that spoke to me in this walk
was the bare, lichen-covered, gray rock at the
cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm
as in summer.
I have so much faith in the power of truth to
84 WINTER. v
communicate itself that I should not believe a
friend, if he should tell me that he had given
credit to an unjust rumor concerning me. Sus
pect! Ah, yes, you may suspect a thousand
things, but I well know that what you suspect
most confidently of all is just the truth. Your
other doubts but flavor this your main suspi
cion. They are the condiments which, taken
alone, do simply bite the tongue. . . .
Jan. 1, 1853. This morning we have some
thing between ice and frost on the trees, etc.
The rocks cased in ice look like alum rocks.
This, not frozen mist or frost, but frozen drizzle,
collected around the slightest cores, gives promi
nence to the least withered herbs and grasses.
Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field ap
pears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage.
The stems of the herbs on the north side are
enlarged from ten to one hundred times. The
addition is so universally on the north side that
a traveler could not lose the points of the com
pass to-day, though it should be never so dark ;
for every blade of grass would serve to guide
him, telling from which side the storm came yes
terday. These straight stems of grasses stand up
like white batons, or sceptres, and make a con
spicuous foreground to the landscape, from six
inches to three feet high. C. thought that these
fat, icy branches on the withered grass and
WINTER. 85
herbs had no nucleus, but looking closer I
showed him the fine, black, wiry threads on
which they impinged, which made him laugh with
surprise. . . . The clover and sorrel send up a
dull, green gleam through this icy coat, like
strange plants. . . . Some weeds bear the ice
in masses ; some, like the trumpet weed and
tansy, in balls for each dried flower. What a
crash of jewels as you walk ! The most careless
walker, who never deigned to look at these
humble weeds before, cannot help observing
them now. This is why the herbage is left to
stand dry in the fields all winter. Upon a solid
foundation of ice stand out, pointing in all di
rections between N. W. and N. E., or within
the limits of 90, little spicula, or crystallized
points, half an inch, or more, in length. Upon
the dark, glazed, plowed ground, where a mere
wiry stem rises, its north side is thickly clad
with these snow-white spears, like some Indian
head-dress, as if it had attracted all the frost. I
saw a prinos bush full of large berries by the
wall in Hubbard s field. Standing on the west
side, the contrast of the red berries with their
white incrustation or prolongation on the north
was admirable. I thought I had never seen
the berries so dazzlingly bright. The whole
north side of the bush, berries and stock, was
beautifully incrusted, and when I went round to
86 WINTER.
the north side the redness of the berries came
softened through, and tingeing the allied snow-
white bush, like an evening sky beyond. These
adjoined snow or ice berries, being beset within
the limits of 90 on the N. with those icy par
ticles or spicula, between which the red glow,
and sometimes the clear red itself, was some
times visible, produced the appearance of a
raspberry bush full of over-ripe fruit.
Standing on the north side of a bush or tree,
looking against the sky, you see only the white
ghost of a tree, without a mote of earthiness;
but as you go round it, the dark core comes into
view. It makes all the odds imaginable whether
you are traveling N. or S. The drooping birches
along the edges of woods are the most feathery,
fairy-like ostrich plumes, and the color of their
trunks increases the delusion. The weight of
the ice gives to the pines the forms which north
ern trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending
and twisting the branches ; for the twigs and
plumes of the pines, being frozen, remain as the
wind held them, and new portions of the trunk
are exposed. Seen from the N. there is no
greenness in the pines, and the character of the
tree is changed. The willows along the edge of
the river look like sedge in the meadows. The
sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain
is falling, and these ghost-like trees make a seen-
WINTER. 87
ery which reminds you of Spitzbergen. I see
now the beauty of the causeway by the bridge,
alders below swelling into the road, overtopped
by willows and maples. The fine grasses and
shrubs in the meadow rise to meet and mingle
with the drooping willows, and the whole makes
an indistinct impression like a mist. Through
all this, the road runs toward those white, ice-
clad, ghostly or fairy trees in the distance, to
ward spirit-land. The pines are as white as a
counterpane, with raised embroidery and white
tassels and fringes. Each fascicle of leaves or
needles is held apart by an icy club surmounted
by a little snowy or icy ball. Finer than the
Saxon arch is this path running under the
pines, roofed not with crossing boughs, but
drooping, ice-covered, irregular twigs. In the
midst of this stately pine, towering like the sol
emn ghost of a tree, I see the white, ice-clad
boughs of other trees appearing, of a different
character ; sometimes oaks with leaves incrusted,
or fine-sprayed maples or walnuts. But finer
than all, this red oak, its leaves incrusted like
shields a quarter of an inch thick, and a thousand
fine spicula like long serrations at right angles
with their planes upon the edges. It produces
an indescribably rich effect, the color of the leaf
coming softened through the ice, a delicate fawn
of many shades. Where the plumes of the pitch
88 WINTER.
pine are short and spreading close to the trunk,
sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed.
Pitch pines present rough, massy grenadier
plumes, each having a darker spot or cavity in
the end where you look in to the bud. I listen
to the booming of the pond as if it were a rea
sonable creature. I return at last in the rain,
and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. . . .
After talking with uncle Charles, the other
night, about the worthies of this country, Web
ster and the rest, as usual, considering who were
geniuses and who not, I showed him up to
bed ; and when I had got into bed myself I
heard the chamber door opened, after eleven
o clock, and he called out in an earnest, stento
rian voice, loud enough to wake the whole house,
" Henry ! was John Quincy Adams a genius ? "
" No, I think not," was my reply. " Well, I
did n t think he was," answered he.
Jan. 1, 1854. Le Jeune, referring to the
death of a young Frenchwoman who had de
voted her life to the savages of Canada, uses this
expression : " Finally this beautiful soul de
tached itself from its body the 15th of March, "
etc.
The drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium
between the currents of air or particular winds.
In our greatest snow-storms, the wind being
northerly, the greatest drifts are on the south
WINTER. 89
side of houses and fences. ... I notice that in
the angle made by our house and shed, a S. W.
exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about
the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular
bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it.
The snow is like a mould, showing the form of
the eddying currents of air which have been im
pressed on it, while the drift and all the rest is
that which fell between the currents or where
they counterbalanced each other. These bound
ary lines are mountain barriers.
The white-in-tails, or grass finches, linger
pretty late, flitting in flocks. They come only
so near winter as the white in their tails indi
cates. . . .
The snow buntings and the tree sparrows are
the true spirits of the snow-storm. They are the
animated beings that ride upon it and have their
life in it.
The snow is the great betrayer. It not only
shows the track of mice, otters, etc., etc., which
else we should rarely, if ever, see, but the tree
sparrows are more plainly seen against its white
ground, and they in turn are attracted by the
dark weeds it reveals. It also drives the crows
and other birds out of the woods to the villages
for food. We might expect to find in the snow
the footprint of a life superior to our own, of
which no zoology takes cognizance. Is there no
90 WINTER.
trace of a nobler life than that of an otter or an
escaped convict to be looked for in it ? Shall we
suppose that is the only life that has been abroad
in the night ? It is only the savage that can see
the track of no higher life than an otter s.
Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure,
the twilight of the bent and half-buried woods?
Is not all there consonant with virtue, justice,
purity, courage, magnanimity ; and does not all
this amount to the track of a higher life than the
otter s, a life which has not gone by and left
a footprint merely, but is there with its beauty,
its music, its perfume, its sweetness, to exhilarate
and recreate us? All that we perceive is the
impress of its spirit. If there is a perfect gov
ernment of the world according to the highest
laws, do we find no trace of intelligence there,
whether in the snow, or the earth, or in our
selves, no other trail but such as a dog can
scent ? Is there none which an angel can detect
and follow, none to guide a man in his pil
grimage, which water will not conceal ? Is there
no odor of sanctity to be perceived ? Is its trail
too old? Have mortals lost the scent? . . .
Are there not hunters who seek for something
higher than foxes, with judgment more discrim
inating than the senses of fox-hounds, who rally
to a nobler music than that of the hunting-horn ?
As there is contention among the fishermen who
WINTER. 91
shall be the first to reach the pond as soon as the
ice will bear, in spite of the cold ; as the hunters
are forward to take the field as soon as the first
snow has fallen, so he who would make the most
of his life for discipline must be abroad early
and late, in spite of cold and wet, in pursuit of
nobler game, whose traces are there most dis
tinct, a life which we seek not to destroy, but
to make our own ; which when pursued does not
earth itself, does not burrow downward, but up
ward, takes not to the trees, but to the heavens,
as its home ; which the hunter pursues with
winged thoughts and aspirations (these the dogs
that tree it), rallying his pack with the bugle
notes of undying faith. . . . Do the Indian and
hunter only need snow-shoes, while the saint sits
indoors in embroidered slippers?
Jan. 1, 1856. . . . p. M. To Walden. . . .
On the ice at Walden are very beautiful large
leaf crystals in great profusion. The ice is fre
quently thickly covered with them for many
rods. They seem to be connected with the ro
settes, a running together of them, look like a
loose bunch of small white feathers springing
from a tuft of down, for their shafts are lost in a
tuft of fine snow like the down about the shaft
of a feather, as if a feather bed had been shaken
over the ice. They are, on a close examination,
surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns, only very
92 WINTER.
broad for their length, and commonly more on
one side the midrib than the other. They are
from an inch to an inch and a half long, and
three fourths of an inch wide, and slanted,
where I look, from the S. W. They have first a
very distinct midrib, though so thin that they
cannot be taken up ; then distinct ribs branch
ing from this, commonly opposite ; and minute
ribs springing again from these last, as in many
ferns, the last running to each crenation in the
border. How much farther they are subdivided
the naked eye cannot discern. They are so thin
and fragile that they melt under your breath
while you are looking closely at them. A fisher
man says they were much finer in the morning.
In other places the ice is strewn with a different
kind of frost-work, in little patches, as if oats
had been spilled, like fibres of asbestos rolled,
one half or three fourths of an inch long and one
eighth or more wide. Here and there patches
of them a foot or two over, like some boreal
grain spilled.
Jan. 1, 1858. ... I have lately been survey
ing the Walden woods so extensively and mi
nutely that I can see it mapped in my mind s
eye as so many men s wood-lots, and am aware
when I walk there that I am at a given moment
passing from such a one s wood-lot to such an
other s. I fear this particular dry knowledge
WINTER. 93
may affect my imagination and fancy, that it
will not be easy to see so much wildiiess and
native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will
seem so unexplored now that I know a stake
and stones may be found in it.
In these respects those Maine woods differ
essentially from ours. There you are never re
minded that the wilderness you are treading is
after all some villager s familiar wood-lot, from
which his ancestors have sledded their fuel for
a generation or two, or some widow s thirds, mi
nutely described in some old deed which is
recorded, of which the owner has got a plan too,
and of which the old boundmarks may be found
every forty rods, if you will search.
What a history this Concord wilderness, which
I affect so much, may have had ! How many old
deeds describe it, some particular wild spot, how
it passed from Cole to Robinson, and Robinson
to Jones, and from Jones finally to Smith in
course of years. Some had cut it over three
times during their lives, built walls and made
a pasture of it perchance, and some burned it
and sowed it with rye. . . .
In the Maine woods you are not reminded of
these things. Tis true the map informs you
that you stand on land granted by the State to
such an academy, or on Bingham s purchase ;
but these names do not impose on you, for you
94 WINTER.
see nothing to remind you of the academy or of
Bingham.
Jan. 2, 1841. . . . Every needle of the white
pine trembles distinctly in the breeze, which on
the sunny side gives the whole tree a shimmer
ing, seething aspect. . . .
I stopped short in the path to-day to admire
how the trees grow up without forethought, re
gardless of the time and circumstances. They
do not wait, as men do. Now is the golden age
of the sapling; earth, air, sun, and rain are
occasion enough.
They were no better in primeval centuries.
"The winter of" their "discontent" never
comes. Witness the buds of the native poplar,
standing gayly out to the frost, on the sides of
its bare switches. They express a naked confi
dence.
With cheerful heart I could be a sojourner in
the wilderness. I should be sure to find there
the catkins of the alder. When I read of them
in the accounts of northern adventurers by
Baffin s Bay or Mackenzie s River, I see how
even there too I could dwell. They are my
little vegetable redeemers. Methinks my virtue
will not flag ere they come again. They are
worthy to have had a greater than Neptune or
Ceres for their donor. Who was the benignant
goddess that bestowed them on mankind ?
WINTER. 95
I saw a fox run across the pond to-day with
the carelessness of freedom. As at intervals I
traced his course in the sunshine, as he trotted
along the ridge of a hill on the crust, it seemed
as if the sun never shone so proudly, sheer down
on the hillside, and the winds and woods were
hushed in sympathy. I gave up to him sun and
earth as to their true proprietor. He did not go
in the sunshine, but the sunshine seemed to fol
low him. There was a visible sympathy between
him and it.
Jan. 2, 1842. The ringing of the church
bell is a much more melodious sound than any
that is heard within the church. All great
values are thus public, and undulate like sound
through the atmosphere. Wealth cannot pur
chase any great private solace or convenience.
Riches are only the means of sociality. I will
depend on the extravagance of my neighbors
for my luxuries ; they will take care to pamper
me, if I will be overfed. The poor man, who
sacrificed nothing for the gratification, seems to
derive a safer and more natural enjoyment from
his neighbor s extravagance than he does him
self. It is a new natural product, from the con
templation of which he derives new vigor and
solace as from a natural phenomenon.
In moments of quiet and leisure my thoughts
are more apt to revert to some natural than to
any human relation.
96 WINTER.
Chaucer s sincere sorrow in his latter days for
the grossness of his earlier works, and that he
" cannot recall and annul " what he had " writ
ten of the base and filthy love of men towards
women, but alas, they are now continued from
man to man," says he, " and I cannot do what I
desire," is all very creditable to his character.
Jan. 2, 1853. 9 A. M. Down railroad to Cliffs.
A clear day, a pure sky with cirrhi. In this clear
air and bright sunlight, the ice-covered trees
have a new beauty, especially the birches along
under the edge of Warren s wood on each side
of the railroad, bent quite to the ground in every
kind of curve. At a distance, as you are ap
proaching them endwise, they look like the white
tents of Indians under the edge of the wood.
The birch is thus remarkable, perhaps, from the
feathery form of the tree, whose numerous small
branches sustain so great weight, bending it to
the ground ; and, moreover, because, from the
color of the bark, the core is less observable.
The oaks not only are less pliant in the trunk,
but have fewer and stiff er twigs and branches.
The birches droop over in all directions, like
ostrich feathers. Most wood paths are impass
able now to a carriage, almost to a foot traveler,
from the number of saplings and boughs bent
over even to the ground in them. Both sides of
the deep cut shine in the sun as if silver-plated,
WINTER. 97
and the fine spray of a myriad bushes on the
edge of the bank sparkle like silver. The tele
graph wire is coated to ten times its size, and
looks like a slight fence scalloping along at a
distance. . . . When we climb the bank at
Stow s wood-lot and come upon the piles of
freshly split white pine wood (for he is ruth
lessly laying it waste), the transparent ice, like
a thick varnish, beautifully exhibits the color
of the clear, tender, yellowish wood, pumpkin
pine (?), and its grain. We pick our way over
a bed of pine boughs a foot or two deep, cover
ing the ground, each twig and needle thickly in-
crusted with ice, one vast gelid mass, which our
feet crunch, as if we were walking through the
cellar of some confectioner to the gods. The
invigorating scent of the recently cut pines
refreshes us, if that is any atonement for this
devastation. . . . Especially now do I notice the
hips, barberries, and winter-berries for their red.
The red or purplish catkins of the alders are in
teresting as a winter fruit, and also of the birch.
But few birds about. Apparently their gran
aries are locked up in ice, with which the grasses
and buds are coated. Even far in the horizon
the pine tops are turned to fir or spruce by the
weight of the ice bending them down, so that
they look like a spruce swamp. No two trees
wear the ice alike. The short plumes and needles
98 WINTER.
of the spruce make a very pretty and peculiar
figure. I see some oaks in the distance, which,
from their branches being curved and arched
downward and massed, are turned into perfect
elms, which suggests that this is the peculiarity
of the elm. Few, if any, other trees are thus
wisp-like, the branches gracefully drooping. I
mean some slender red and white oaks which
have been recently left in a clearing. Just
apply a weight to the end of the boughs which
will cause them to droop, and to each particular
twig which will mass them together, and you
have perfect elms. Seen at the right angle, each
ice-incrusted blade of stubble shines like a prism
with some color of the rainbow, intense blue, or
violet, and red. The smooth field, clad the other
day with a low wiry grass, is now converted into
rough stubble land, where you walk with crunch
ing feet. It is remarkable that the trees can
ever recover from the burden which bends them
to the ground. I should like to weigh a limb
of this pitch pine. The character of the tree is
changed. I have now passed the bars, and am
approaching the Cliffs. The forms and variety
of the ice are particularly rich here, there are
so many low bushes and weeds before me as I
ascend toward the sun, especially very small
white pines almost merged in the ice-incrusted
ground. All objects are to the eye polished
WINTER. 99
silver. It is a perfect land of faery. Le Jeune
describes the same in Canada in 1636 : " Nos
grands bois ne paroissoient qu une forest de
cristal." . . . The bells are particularly sweet
this morning. I hear more, methinks, than ever
before. . . . Men obey their call and go to the
stove-warmed church, though God exhibits him
self to the walker in a frosted bush to-day as
much as he did in a burning one to Moses of
old. We build a fire on the Cliffs. When
kicking to pieces a pine stump for the fat knots
which alone would burn this icy day, at the risk
of spoiling my boots, having looked in vain for
a stone, I thought how convenient would be an
Indian stone axe to batter it with. The bark of
white birch, though covered with ice, burned
well. We soon had a roaring fire of fat pine on
a shelf of rock from which we overlooked the
icy landscape. The sun, too, was melting the
ice on the rocks, and the water was purling
downwards in dark bubbles exactly like polly-
wogs. What a good word is flame, expressing
the form and soul of fire, lambent, with forked
tongue ! We lit a fire to see it, rather than to
feel it, it is so rare a sight these days. It seems
good to have our eyes ache once more with
smoke. What a peculiar, indescribable color
has this flame ! a reddish or lurid yellow, not
so splendid or full of light as of life and heat.
100 WINTER.
These fat roots made much flame and a very
black smoke, commencing where the flame left
off, which cast fine flickering shadows on the
rocks. There was some bluish-white smoke from
the rotten part of the wood. Then there was
the fine white ashes which farmers wives some
times use for pearlash.
Jan. 2, 1854. ... The tints of the sunset
sky are never purer and more ethereal than in
the coldest winter days. This evening, though
the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystal
line, and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very
beautiful. I wish to get on to a hill to look
down on the winter landscape. We go about
these days as if we were in fetters ; we walk in
the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our
predecessors. . . . The team and driver have
long since gone by, but I see the marks of his
whiplash on the snow, its recoil ; but, alas !
these are not a complete tally of the strokes
which fell upon the oxen s back. The unmerci
ful driver thought, perhaps, that no one saw him,
but unwittingly he recorded each blow on the
unspotted snow behind his back as in a book of
life. To more searching eyes the marks of his
lash are in the air. I paced partly through the
pitch-pine wood, and partly the open field from
the turnpike by the Lee place to the railroad from
N. to S., more than one fourth of a mile, meas-
WINTER. 101
uring at every ten paces. The average of sixty-
five measurements up hill and down was nine
teen inches. This, after increasing those in the
woods by one inch (little enough), on account
of the snow on the pines. ... I think one
would have to pace a mile on a N. and S. line,
up and down hill, through woods and fields, to
get a quite reliable result. The snow will drift
sometimes the whole width of a field, and fill a
road or valley beyond, so that it would be well
your measuring included several such driftings.
Very little reliance is to be put on the usual
estimates of the depth of snow. I have heard
different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eight
een, twenty-four, thirty -six, and forty -eight
inches. My snow-shoes sank about four inches
into the snow this morning, but more than twice
as much the 29th.
On the N. side of the railroad, above the Red
House crossing, the train has cut through a
drift about one fourth of a mile long, and two
to nine feet high, straight up and down. It re
minds me of the Highlands, the Pictured Eocks,
the side of an iceberg, etc. Now that the sun
has just sunk below the horizon, it is wonderful
what an amount of soft light it appears to be
absorbing. There appears to be more day just
here by its side than anywhere else. I can al
most see to a depth of six inches into it. It is
made translucent, it is so saturated with light.
102 WINTER.
I have heard of one precious stone found in
Concord, the cinnamon stone. A geologist has
spoken of it as found in this town, antl a farmer
described to me one he once found, perhaps the
same referred to by the other. He said it was
as large as a brick, and as thick, and yet you
could distinguish a pin through it, it was so
transparent.
Jan. 2, 1855. . . . Yesterday [skating] we
saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of
us. The shadows of the bridges, etc., on the
snow were a dark indigo blue.
Jan. 2, 1859. . . . Going up the hill through
Stow s young oak wood-land, I listen to the
sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves.
This is the voice of the wood now. It would be
comparatively still and more dreary here in
other respects, if it were not for these leaves
that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the
sea, and is inspiriting like that, suggesting how
all the land is sea-coast to the aerial ocean. It
is the sound of the surf, the rut, of an unseen
ocean, billows of air breaking on the forest,
like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It
rises and falls, swells and dies away, with agree
able alternation, as the sea surf does. Perhaps
the landsmen can foretell a storm by it. It is
remarkable how universal these grand murmurs
are, these backgrounds of sound, the surf,
WINTER. 103
the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc., which
yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially
one voice, the earth voice, the breathing or
snoring of the creature. The earth is our ship,
and this is the sound of the wind in her rigging
as we sail. Just as the inhabitant of Cape Cod
hears the surf ever breaking on its shores, so we
countrymen hear this kindred surf on the leaves
of the forest. Regarded as a voice, though it
is not articulate, as our articulate sounds are
divided into vowels (though this is nearer a
consonant sound), labials, dentals, palatals, sibi
lants, mutes, aspirates, etc., so this may be
called folial or frondal, produced by air driven
against the leaves, and comes nearest to our
sibilants or aspirates.
Michaux said that white oaks might be dis
tinguished by retaining their leaves in the win
ter, but as far as my observation goes they
cannot be so distinguished. All our large oaks
may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower
limbs and about the trunk, though only a few,
and the white oak scarcely more than the others ;
while the same trees, when young, are all alike
thickly clothed in the winter, but the leaves of
the white oak are the most withered and shriv
eled of them all.
There being some snow on the ground, I can
easily distinguish the forest on the mountains
104 WINTER.
(the Peterboro Hills, etc.), and tell which are
forested, those parts and those mountains being
dark, like a shadow. I cannot distinguish the
forest thus far in summer.
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling
about grammar and style, the position of the
particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting
every speaker to certain rules, Mr. Webster,
perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr.
Kirkham s rule, I see they forget that the
first requisite and rule is that expression shall
be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a
brute, or an interjection : first of all, mother
tongue ; and last of all, artificial or father
tongue. Essentially, your truest poetic sentence
is as free and lawless as a lamb s bleat. The
grammarian is often one who can neither cry
nor laugh, yet thinks he can express human emo
tions. So the posture-masters tell you how you
shall walk, turning your toes out excessively,
perhaps; but so the beautiful walkers are not
made. . . .
Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to
the ice in order that he may get in. Tells of
Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under
the ice and was drowned below the Holt. . . .
They used to cross the river there on the ice,
going to market formerly.
Jan. 3, 1842. It is pleasant when one can
WINTER. 105
relieve the grossness of the kitchen and the table
by the simple beauty of his repast, so that there
may be anything in it to attract the eye of the
artist, even. I have been popping corn to-night,
which is only a more rapid blossoming of the
seed under a greater than July heat. The
popped corn is a perfect winter flower, hinting
of anemones and houstonias. . . . Here has
bloomed for my repast such a delicate flower as
will soon spring by the wall sides, and this is
as it should be. Why should not Nature revel
sometimes, and genially relax, and make herself
familiar at my board ? I would have my house
a bower fit to entertain her. It is a feast of
such innocence as might have snowed down ; on
my warm hearth sprang these cerealian blos
soms ; here was the bank where they grew. Me-
thinks some such visible token of approval
would always accompany the simple and healthy
repast, some such smiling or blessing upon it.
Our appetite should always be so related to our
taste, and our board be an epitome of the pri
meval table which Nature sets by hill and wood
arid stream for her dumb pensioners.
/ Jan. 3, 1852. ... A spirit sweeps the string
of the telegraph harp, and strains of music are
drawn out suddenly, like the wire itself. . . .
What becomes of the story of a tortoise shell on
the seashore now? The world is young, and
106 WINTER.
music is its infant voice. I do not despair of a
world where you have only to stretch an ordi
nary wire from tree to tree to hear such strains
drawn from it by New England breezes as make
Greece and all antiquity seem poor in melody.
Why was man so made as to be thrilled to his
inmost being by the vibrating of a wire ? Are
not inspiration and ecstasy a more rapid vibra
tion of the nerves swept by the inrushing ex
cited spirit, whether zephyral or boreal in its
character ?
Jan. 3, 1853. ... I love Nature partly be
cause she is not man, but a retreat from him.
None of his institutions control or pervade her.
Here a different kind of right prevails. In her
midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If
this world were all man, I could not stretch my
self. I should lose all hope. He is constraint ;
she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for
another world ; she makes me content with this.
None of the joys she supplies is subject to his
rules and definitions. What he touches he
taints. In thought he moralizes. One would
think that no free, joyful labor was possible to
him. How infinite and pure the least pleasure
of which nature is basis compared with the con
gratulation of mankind ! The joy which nature
yields is like that afforded by the frank words of
one we love.
WINTER. 107
Man, man is the devil,
The source of all evil.
Methinks these prosers, with their saws and
their laws, do not know how glad a man can
be. What wisdom, what warning, can prevail
against gladness? There is no law so strong
which a little gladness may not transgress. I
have a room all to myself. It is nature. It is
a place beyond the jurisdiction of human govern
ments. Pile up your books, the records of sad
ness, your saws and your laws, Nature is glad
outside, and her many worms within will ere
long topple them down. . . . Nature is a prairie
for outlaws. There are two worlds, the post-
office and nature. I know them both. I con
tinually forget mankind and their institutions,
as I do a bank.
Jan. 3, 1856. It is astonishing how far a
merely well-dressed and good looking man may
go without being challenged by a sentinel. What
is called good society will bid high for such.
The man whom the state has raised to high
office, like that of governor, for instance, from
some, it may be, honest but less respected call
ing, cannot return to his former humble but
profitable pursuits, his old customers will be so
shy of him. His ex-honorableness stands seri
ously in his way, whether he be a lawyer or a
shopkeeper. He can t get ex-honorated. So he
108 WINTER.
becomes a sort of state pauper, an object of
charity on its hands, which the state is bound in
honor to see through and provide with offices of
similar respectability, that he may not come to
want. The man who has been president be
comes the ex-president, and can t travel or stay
at home anywhere, but men will persist in pay
ing respect to his ex-ship. It is cruel to remem
ber his deeds so long. When his time is out,
why can t they let the poor fellow go ?
Jan. 3, 1861. Why should the ornamental
tree society confine its labors to the highway
only? An Englishman laying out his ground
does not regard simply the avenues and walks.
Does not the landscape deserve attention ?
What are the natural features which make a
township handsome? A river, with its water
falls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or indi
vidual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing
singly. Such things are beautiful ; they have a
high use which dollars and cents never repre
sent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise,
they would seek to preserve these things, though
at a considerable expense ; for such things edu
cate far more than any hired teachers, preach
ers, or any system of school education at present
organized. Far the handsomest thing I saw in
Boxboro was its noble oak wood. I doubt if
there is a finer one in Massachusetts. Let the
WINTER. 109
town keep it a century longer, and men will
make pilgrimages to it from all parts of the
country. And. yet it would be very like the rest
of New England if Boxboro were ashamed of
that wood-land. I have since learned, however,
that she is contented to let that forest stand, in
stead of the houses and farms that might sup
plant it, because the land pays a much larger
tax to the town now than it would then. I said
to myself, if the history of the town is written,
the chief stress is probably laid on its parish,
and there is not one word about the forest in it.
It would be worth while if in each town a com
mittee were appointed to see that the beauty of
the town received no detriment. If we have the
biggest bowlder in the country, then it should
not belong to an individual, nor be made into
a door- step. As in many countries precious
metals belong to the crown, so here more pre
cious natural objects of rare beauty should be
long to the public. Not only the channel, but
both banks of every river should be a public
highway. It is not the only use of a river, to
float on it. Think of a mountain top in the
township, even to the minds of the Indians a
sacred place, only accessible through private
grounds, a temple, as it were, which you can
not enter except at the risk of letting out or let
ting in somebody s cattle, in fact the temple
WINTER.
itself in this case private property, and standing
in a man s cow-yard. New Hampshire courts
have lately been deciding, as if it were for
them to decide, whether the top of Mt. Washing
ton belonged to A. or to B., and it being decided
in favor of B., as I hear, he went up one winter
with the proper officers and took formal posses
sion. But I think that the top of Mt. Wash
ington should not be private property ; it should
be but an opportunity for modesty and rever
ence, or if only to suggest that earth has higher
uses than we commonly put her to. ...
Thus we behave like oxen in a flower garden.
The true fruit of nature can only be plucked
with a delicate hand not bribed by any earthly
reward, and a fluttering heart. No hired man
can help us to gather this crop. How few ever
get beyond feeding, clothing, sheltering, and
warming themselves in this world, and begin to
treat themselves as intellectual and moral beings.
. . . Most men, it seems to me, do not care for
Nature, and would sell their share in all her
beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated
sum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and
lay waste the sky as well as the earth. We are
safe on that side for the present. We cut down
the few old oaks which witnessed the transfer of
the township from the Indian to the white man,
and commence our museum with a cartridge-box
taken from a British soldier in 1775.
WINTER. Ill
Jan. 4, 1841. I know a woman who is as
true to me, and as incessant with her mild re
buke as the blue sky. When I stand under her
cope, instantly all pretension drops off, and I am
swept by an influence as by a wind and rain
which remove all taint, I am fortunate that I
can pass and repass before her each day, and
prove my strength in her glances. She is far
truer to me than to herself. Her eyes are like
the windows of nature, through which I catch
glimpses of the native land of the soul. From
them comes a light which is not of the sun. His
rays are in eclipse when they shine on me.
Jan. 4, 1850. The longest silence is the most
pertinent question most pertinently put. Em
phatically silent. The most important ques
tions, whose answers concern us more than any
others, are never put in any other way.
It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well
disposed, so truly to bear themselves toward each
other that a feeling of falseness and hollowness
shall not soon spring up between them. The
least anxiety to behave truly, vitiates the rela
tion.
Jan. 4, 1853. To what I will call Yellow
Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard s, in the north part
of the town, . . . west of the Hunt pasture.
There are more of these trees in it than any
where else in the town that I know. How pleas-
112 WINTER.
ing to stand near a new or rare tree ; and few
are so handsome as this; singularly allied to
the black birch in its sweet checkerberry scent
and its form, and to the canoe birch in its peel
ing or fringed and tasseled bark. The top is
brush-like as in the black birch. The bark an
exquisite . . . delicate gold color, curled off partly
from the trunk with vertical clear or smooth
spaces, as if a plane had been passed up the
tree. The sight of these trees affects me more
than California gold. I measured one five and
two twelfths feet in circumference at six feet
from the ground. We have the silver and the
golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen-haired
sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with
golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of
the swampy soil and braces itself. And here
flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook
over the iron-red sands in the sombre swamp,
swampy wine. In an undress, this tree. Ah,
the time will come when these will be all gone.
Among the primitive trees. What sort of dryads
haunt these ? Blonde nymphs. Near by, the
great pasture oaks with horizontal boughs. At
Pratt s, the stupendous boughy branching elm,
like vast thunderbolts stereotyped upon the sky,
heaven-defying, sending back dark, vegetable
bolts, as if flowing back in the channel of the
lightning. The white oaks have a few leaves
WINTER. 113
about the crown of the trunk, in the lower part
of the tree, like a tree within a tree. The tree
is thus less wracked by the wind and ice. In
the twilight I went through the swamp, and the
yellow birches sent forth a yellow gleam which
each time made my heart beat faster. Occasion
ally you come to a dead and leaning white birch,
beset with large fungi like ears or little shelves,
with a rounded edge above. I walked with the
yellow birch. The prinos is green within. If
there were Druids whose temples were the oak
groves, my temple is the swamp. Sometimes I
was in doubt about a birch whose vest was but
toned, smooth and dark, till I came nearer and
saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a
button was off.
Jan. 4, 1857. . . . After spending four or
five days surveying and drawing a plan, inces
santly, I especially feel the need of putting my
self in communication with nature again to re
cover my tone, to withdraw out of the wearying
and unprofitable world of affairs. The things I
have been doing have but a fleeting and acci
dental importance, however much men are im
mersed in them, and yield very little valuable
fruit. I would fain have been wading through
the woods and fields, and conversing with the
sane snow. Having waded in the very shallowest
stream of time, I would now bathe my temples
114 WINTER.
in eternity. I wish again to participate in the
serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the
river and the woods. I thus from time to time
break off my connection with eternal truths, and
go with the shallow stream of human affairs,
grinding at the mill of the Philistines. But
when my task is done, with never - failing confi
dence, I devote myself to the infinite again. It
would be sweet to deal with men more, I can
imagine, but where dwell they? Not in the
fields which I traverse.
Jan. 4, 1858. . . . That bright and warm re
flection of sunlight from the insignificant edging
of stubble was remarkable. I was coming down
stream over the meadow on the ice, within four
or five rods of the eastern shore, the sun on my
left about a quarter of an hour above the hori
zon. The ice was soft and sodden, of a dull
lead color, quite dark and reflecting no light, as
I looked eastward, but my eyes caught, by acci
dent, a singular, sunny brightness, reflected from
the narrow border of stubble only three or four
inches high, and as many feet wide perhaps,
which rose along the edge of the ice at the foot
of the hill. It was not a mere brightening of
the bleached stubble, but the warm and yellow
light of the sun, which, as appeared, it was pecul
iarly fitted to reflect. It was that amber light
from the west which we sometimes witness after
WINTER. 115
a storm, concentrated on the stubble, for the
hill beyond was merely a dark russet, spotted
with snow. All the yellow rays seemed to be
reflected by this insignificant stubble alone, and
when I looked more generally a little above it, see
ing it with the under part of my eye, . . . the
reflected light made its due impression . . . sep
arated from the proper color of the stubble, and
it glowed almost like a low, steady, and serene
fire. It was precisely as if the sunlight had
mechanically slid over the ice, and lodged
against the stubble. It will be enough to say of
something warmly and sunnily bright, that it
glowed like lit stubble. It was remarkable that
looking eastward this was the only evidence of
the light in the west.
Jan. 5, 1841. I grudge to the record that
lavish expenditure of love and grace which are
due rather to the spoken thought. A man
writes because he has no opportunity to speak.
Why should he be the only mute creature, and
his speech no part of the melody of the grove ?
He never gladdens the ear of nature, and ushers
in no spring with his lays. We are more anx
ious to speak than to be heard.
Jan. 5, 1842. I find that, whatever hindrances
occur, I write just about the same amount of
truth in my journal, for the record is more con
centrated, and usually it is some very real and
116 . WINTER.
earnest life that interrupts. All flourishes are
omitted. If I saw wood from morning to night,
though I grieve that I could not observe the
train of my thoughts during that time, yet in the
evening, the few scrawled lines which describe
my day s occupation will make the creaking of
the saw more musical than my freest fancies
could have been. . . .
I discover in Raleigh s verses the vices of the
courtier. They are not equally sustained, as if
his noble genius were warped by the frivolous
society of the court. He was capable of rising
to a remarkable elevation. His poetry has for
the most part a heroic tone and vigor, as of a
knight errant. But again there seems to have
been somewhat unkindly in his education, as if
he had by no means grown up to be the man he
promised. He was apparently too genial and
loyal a soul, or rather he was incapable of resist
ing temptation from that quarter. If to his
genius and culture he could have added the tem
perament of Fox or Cromwell, the world would
have had cause longer to remember him. . . .
One would have said it was by some lucky fate
that he and Shakespeare flourished at the
same time in England, and yet what do we know
of their acquaintanceship ?
Jan. 5, 1852. To-day the trees are white
with snow, I mean their stems and branches,
WINTER. 117
and have the true wintry look on the storm side.
Not till this has winter come to the forest. It
looks like the small frost-work in the path and
on the windows now, especially the oak woods at
a distance, and you see better the form which
the branches take. That is a picture of winter;
and now you may put a cottage under the trees
and roof it with snow-drifts, and let the smoke
curl up amid the boughs in the morning.
It was a dark day, the heavens shut out with
dense snow clouds, and the trees wetting me
with the melting snow, when going through
B s wood on Fair Haven, which they are
cutting off, and suddenly looking between the
stems of the trees, I thought I saw an extensive
fire in the western horizon. It was a bright,
coppery yellow fair weather cloud along the edge
of the horizon, gold with some alloy of copper,
in such contrast with the remaining clouds as to
suggest nothing; less than fire. On that side,
the clouds which covered our day, low in the
horizon, with a dim and smoke-like edge, were
rolled up like a curtain with heavy folds, reveal
ing this further bright curtain beyond.
Jan. 5, 1854. . . . This afternoon, as prob
ably yesterday, it being warm and thawing,
though fair, the snow is covered with snow fleas.
Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for
half a mile in the tracks of a wood -chopper in
118 WINTER.
deep snow. With the first thawing- weather
they come. There is also some blueness now
in the snow, the heavens being toward night
overcast. The blueness is more distinct after
sunset.
Jan. 5, 1855. [Worcester.] A. M. Walked
to southerly end of Quinsigamond Pond via
Quinsigamond Village, and returned by floating
bridge. Saw the straw-built wigwam of an In
dian from St. Louis (Rapids?), Canada, appar
ently a half-breed. Not being able to buy
straw, he had made it chiefly of dry grass which
he had cut in a meadow with his knife. It was
against a bank, and partly of earth all round.
The straw or grass laid on horizontal poles, and
kept down by similar ones outside, like our
thatching. Makes them of straw often in Can
ada, can make one, if he has the straw, in one
day. The door, on hinges, was of straw also,
put on perpendicularly, pointed at top to fit the
roof. The roof steep, six or eight inches thick.
He was making baskets, wholly of sugar maple ;
could find no black ash. Sewed or bound the
edge with maple also. Did not look up once
while we were there. There was a fire-place of
stone running out on one side, and covered with
earth. It was the nest of a large meadow
mouse. Had he ever hunted moose ? When he
was down at Green Island. Where was that ?
WINTER. 119
Oh, far down, very far ; caught seals there. No
books down that way. . . .
R. W. E. told of Mr. Hill, his classmate, of
Bangor, who was much interested in my " Wai-
den," but relished it merely as a capital satire
and joke, and even thought that the survey and
map of the pond were not real, but a caricature
of the Coast Survey.
Jan. 5, 1856. . . . The thin snow now driv
ing from the north and lodging on my coat con
sists of those beautiful star crystals, not cottony
and chubby spokes as on the 13th of December,
but thin and partly transparent crystals. They
are about one tenth of an inch in diameter, per
fect little wheels with six spokes, without a tire,
or rather with six perfect little leaflets, fern-like,
with a distinct, straight, slender, midrib, raying
from the centre. On each side of each midrib
there is a transparent, thin blade with a crenate
edge. How full of the creative genius is the air
in which these are generated ! I should hardly
admire more, if real stars fell and lodged on my
coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divin
ity, so that not a snow-flake escapes its fashion
ing hand. Nothing is cheap and coarse, neither
dew-drops nor snow-flakes. Soon the storm in
creases (it was already very severe to face), and
the snow comes finer, more white and powdery.
Who knows but this is the original form of
120 WINTER.
all snow-flakes, but that, when I observe these
crystal stars falling around me, they are only
just generated in the low mist next the earth.
I am nearer to the source of the snow, its primal,
auroral, and golden hour or infancy ; commonly
the flakes reach us travel-worn and agglomer
ated, comparatively without order or beauty, far
down in their fall, like men in their advanced
age. As for the circumstances under which
this phenomenon occurs, it is quite cold, and the
driving storm is bitter to face, though very little
snow is falling. It comes almost horizontally
from the north. ... A divinity must have stirred
within them, before the crystals did thus shoot
and set. Wheels of the storm chariots. The
same law that shapes the earth and the stars
shapes the snow-flake. Call it rather snow star.
As surely as the petals of a flower are numbered,
each of these countless snow stars comes whirl
ing to earth, pronouncing thus with emphasis
the number six, order, KOO-//.O?. This was the be
ginning of a storm which reached far and wide,
and elsewhere was more severe than here. On
the Saskatchewan, where no man of science is
present to behold, still down they come, and not
the less fulfill their destiny, perchance melt at
once on the Indian s face. What a world we
live in, where myriads of these little disks, so
beautiful to the most prying eye, are whirled
WINTER. 121
down on every traveler s coat, the observant and
the unobservant, on the restless squirrel s fur,
on the far-stretching fields and forests, the
wooded dells and the mountain tops. Far, far
away from the haunts of men, they roll down
some little slope, fall over and come to their
bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the
mass, ready anon to swell some little rill with
their contribution, and so, at last, the universal
ocean from which they came. There they lie,
like the wreck of chariot wheels after a battle in
the skies. Meanwhile the meadow mouse shoves
them aside in his gallery, the school -boy casts
them in his snow-ball, or the woodman s sled
glides smoothly over them, these glorious span
gles, the sweepings of heaven s floor. And
they all sing, melting as they sing, of the myster
ies of the number six; six, six, six. He takes
up the waters of the sea in his hand, leaving the
salt ; he disperses it in mist through the skies ;
he re-collects and sprinkles it like grain in six-
rayed snowy stars over the earth, there to lie till
he dissolves its bonds again.
Jan. 5, 1859. As I go over the causeway
near the railroad bridge, I hear a fine, busy
twitter, and looking up, see a nuthatch hopping
along and about a swamp white oak branch, in
specting every side of it, as readily hanging
head downwards as standing upright, and then
122 WINTER.
it utters a distinct quah, as if to attract a com
panion. Indeed, that other finer twitter seemed
designed to keep some companion in tow, or else
it was like a very busy man talking to himself.
The companion was a single chickadee, which
lisped six or eight feet off. There were perhaps
no other birds than these within a quarter of
a mile. When the nuthatch flitted to another
tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly fol
lowed.
Jan. 5, 1860. ... A man receives only what
he is ready to receive, whether physically, or in
tellectually, or morally, as animals conceive their
kind at certain seasons only. We hear and ap
prehend only what we already half know. If
there is something which does not concern me,
which is out of my line, which by experience or
by genius my attention is not drawn to, however
novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken,
I hear it not, if it is written, I read it not, or if
I read it, it does not detain me. Every man
thus tracks himself through life, in all his hear
ing and reading and observation and travel
ing. His observations make a chain. The
phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be
linked with the rest which he has observed, he
does not observe. By and by we may be ready
to receive what we cannot receive now. I find,
for example, in Aristotle something about the
WINTER. 123
spawning, etc., of the pout and perch, because I
know something about it already, and have my
attention aroused, but I do not discover till very
late that he has made other equally important
observations on the spawning of other fishes,
because I am not interested in those fishes.
Jan. 6, 1838. As a child looks forward to the
coming of the summer, so could we contemplate
with quiet joy the circle of the seasons return
ing without fail eternally. As the spring came
round during so many years of the gods, we
could go out to admire and adorn anew our
Eden, and yet never tire.
Jan. 6, 1841. We are apt to imagine that
this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Re
ligion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and
parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as
catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth s
axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will
forget it all between sunset and dawn. It is
the three-inch swing of some pendulum in a
cupboard, which the great pulse of Nature
vibrates clearly through each instant. When
we lift our lids and open our ears, it disappears
with smoke and rattle, like the cars on the rail
road.
Jan. 6, 1857. ... A man asked me the
other night whether such and such persons were
not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I
124 WINTER.
perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not
aspiring to much more than an animal content.
Why, said I, speaking to his condition, the
stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I
am happy too. When I took up a fragment of
a walnut shell this morning, I saw by its grain
and composition, its form and color, etc., that it
was made for happiness. The most brutish and
inanimate objects that are made suggest an
everlasting and thorough satisfaction. They
are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould,
etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord
River would have continued to flow these mil
lions of years by Clamshell Hill, and round
Hunt s Island, if it had not been happy, if it
had been miserable in its channel, tired of exist
ence, and cursing its maker and the hour when
it sprang.
Jan. 6, 1858. ... I derive a certain excite
ment not to be refused even from going through
Dennis s swamp on the opposite side of the
railroad, where the poison dogwood abounds.
This simple-stemmed bush is very full of fruit,
hanging in loose, dry, pale green, drooping
panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It
impresses me as the most fruitful shrub there
abouts. I cannot refrain from plucking it, and
bringing home some fruitful sprigs. Other
fruits are there which belong to the hard season,
WINTER. 125
the enduring panicled andromeda, and a few
partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the
bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a
terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little
dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the
snow over which the snow has not yet been able
to prevail. I was feeling very cheap, never
theless, reduced to make the most of my dog
wood berries. Very little evidence of the di
vine did I see just then, and life was not as rich
and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when
my attention was caught by a snow-flake on my
coat sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crys
talline, star-shaped ones, six rayed, like a flat
wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were per
fect little pine trees in shape, arranged around
a central spangle. This little object which, with
many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my
coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that
virtue had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and
why should man lose heart? Sometimes the
pines were worn, and had lost their branches,
and again it appeared as if several stars had
impinged on one another at various angles, mak
ing a somewhat spherical mass. . . . There were
mingled with these starry flakes small downy
pellets also. . . . We are rained and snowed on
with gems. I confess that I was a little en
couraged, for I was beginning to believe that
126 WINTER.
Nature was poor and mean, and I was now con
vinced that she turned off as good work as ever.
What a world we live in ! Where are the jewel
ers shops ? There is nothing handsomer than a
snow-flake and a dew-drop. I may say that the
maker of the world exhausts his skill with each
snow-flake and dew-drop that he sends down.
We think that the one mechanically coheres,
and that the other simply flows together and
falls, but in truth they are the product of enthu
siasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with
the artist s utmost skill.
Jan. 6, 1859. p. M. To Martial Miles s. . . .
Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl, Strix
Acadica, which he caught alive with his hands
about a week ago. He had induced it to eat,
but it died. It was a funny little brown bird,
spotted with white, seven and one half inches long
to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the
claws, and nineteen in alar extent, not so long
by a considerable as a robin, though much
stouter. This one had three (not two, and
Nuttall says three) white bars on its tail, but
no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet
were feathered quite to the extremity of the
toes, looking like whitish mice, or as when one
pulls stockings over his boots. As usual, the
white spots on the upper sides of the wings are
smaller and a more distinct white, while those
WINTER. 127
beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny
white. Even a bird s wing has an upper and
an under side, and the last admits only of more
subdued and tender colors.
Jan. 7, 1851. . . . The knowledge of an un
learned man is living and luxuriant like a forest,
but covered with mosses and lichens, and for the
most part inaccessible and going to waste ; the
knowledge of the man of science is like timber
collected in yards for public works, which still
supports a green sprout here and there, but even
this is liable to dry rot.
I felt my spirits rise when I had got out of
the road into the open fields, and the sky had a
new appearance. I stepped along more buoy
antly. There was a warm sunset in the wooded
valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Red
dish dun-colored clouds, like dusky flames, stood
over it, and then streaks of blue sky were seen
here and there. The life, the joy that is in blue
sky after a storm. There is no account of the
blue sky in history. Before, I walked in the
ruts of travel, now I adventured. . . .
If I have any conversation with a scamp in
my walk, my afternoon is wont to be spoiled.
Jan. 7, 1852. . . . Now ... I see the sun
descending into the west. There is something
new, a snoic bow in the east, on the snow clouds,
merely a white bow, hardly any color distin-
128 WINTER.
guishable. But in the west what inconceivable
crystalline purity of blue sky, . . . and I see
feathery clouds on this ground, some traveling
north, others directly in the opposite direction,
though apparently close together. Some of
these cloudlets are waifs and droppings from
rainbows, clear rainbow through and through,
spun out of the fibre of the rainbow, or rather
as if the children of the west had been pulling
rainbow (instead of tow), that had done ser
vice, old junk of rainbow, and cast it into flocks.
And then such fantastic, feathery scrawls of
gauze-like vapor on this elysian ground ! We
never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth
each afternoon and look into the west a quarter
of an hour before sunset with fresh curiosity to
see what new picture will be painted there,
what new phenomenon exhibited, what new dis
solving views. . . . Every day a new picture is
painted and framed, held up for half an hour in
such lights as the great artist chooses, and then
withdrawn and the curtain falls. The sun goes
down, long the after-glow gives light, the dam
ask curtains glow along the western window, the
first star is lit, and I go home.
Jan. 7, 1853. To Nawshawtuck. This is one
of those pleasant winter mornings when you
find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still
the air is serene and the sun feels gratefully
WINTER. 129
warm an hour after sunrise. Though so fair,
... a whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of
the air concealing the mountains. The smokes
go up from the village, you hear the cocks with
immortal vigor, the children shout on their way
to school, and the sound made by the railroad
men hammering a rail is uncommonly musical.
This promises a perfect winter day. In the
heavens, except the altitude of the sun, you have,
as it were, the conditions of summer, perfect
serenity and clarity, and sonorousness in the
earth. All nature is but braced by the cold.
It gives tension to both body and mind. . . .
About ten minutes before 10 A. M. I heard
a very loud sound, and felt a violent jar which
made the house rock and the loose articles on
my table rattle. I knew it must be either a
powder mill blown up or an earthquake. Not
knowing but another and more violent shock
might take place, I immediately ran down-stairs.
I saw from the door a vast expanding column of
whitish smoke rising in the west directly over
the powder mills four miles distant. It was
unfolding its volumes above, which made it
wider there. In three or four minutes it had
all risen and spread itself into a lengthening,
somewhat copper-colored cloud, parallel with the
horizon from N. to S., and in about ten min
utes after the explosion, it passed over my head,
130 WINTER.
being several miles long from N. to S., and
distinctly dark and smoky toward the N., not
nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky.
Jumped into a man s wagon and rode toward
the mills. In a few moments more, I saw
behind me, far in the E., a faint, salmon-col
ored cloud carrying the news of the explosion
to the sea, and perchance over the head of the
absent proprietor. Arrived probably before
half-past ten. There were perhaps thirty or
forty wagons there. The kernel mill had blown
up first, and killed three men who were in it,
said to be turning a roller with a chisel. In
three seconds after, one of the mixing houses
exploded. The kernel house was swept away,
and fragments, mostly but a foot or two in
length, were strewn over the hills and meadows
for thirty rods. The slight snow on the ground
was for the most part melted around. The
mixing house about ten rods W. was not so
completely dispersed, for most of the machinery
remained a total wreck. The press house about
twelve rods E. had two thirds of its boards off,
and a mixing house next westward from that
which blew up had lost some boards on the E.
side. The boards fell out (i. 6., of those build
ings which did not blow up), the air within
apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum
occasioned by the explosions. So the powder
WINTER. 131
being bared to the fiery particles in the air, the
building explodes. The powder on the floor of
the bared press house was six inches deep in some
places, and the crowd were thoughtlessly going
into it. A few windows were broken thirty or
forty rods off. Timber six inches square and
eighteen feet long was thrown a dozen rods over
a hill eighty feet high at least. Thirty rods was
about the limit of fragments. The drying house,
in which was a fire, was perhaps twenty-five rods
distant and escaped. . . . Some of the clothes
of the men were in the tops of the trees where
undoubtedly their bodies had been and left
them. . . . Put the different buildings thirty
rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a
time.
Jan. 7, 1854. p. M. To Ministerial Swamp.
... I went to these woods partly to hear an
owl, but did not. Now that I have left them
nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly,
hoorer Jioo. Strange that we should hear this
sound so often, yet so rarely see the bird, often-
est at twilight. It has a singular prominence
as a sound. ... It is a sound which the wood
or the horizon makes.
Jan. 7, 1855. . . . Cloudy and misty. On
opening the door I feel a very warm southwest
erly wind contrasting with the cooler air of the
house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street.
132 WINTER.
It is in fact a January thaw. The channel of
the river is quite open in many places, and in
others I remark that the ice and water alter
nate like waves and the hollow between them.
There are long reaches of open water where I
look for muskrats and ducks as I go along to
Clamshell Hill. I hear the pleasant sound of
running water. . . . The delicious, soft, spring-
suggesting air, how it fills my veins with life.
Life becomes again credible to me. A certain
dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love
nature again. Here is my Italy, my heaven,
my New England. I understand why the In
dians hereabouts placed heaven in the S. W.
The soft south. On the slopes, the ground is
laid bare, and radical leaves revealed, crowfoot,
shepherd s purse, clover, etc., a fresh green, and,
in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds with a
bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow
saxifrage. These and the many withered plants
laid bare remind me of spring and of botany.
On the same bare sand is revealed a new crop
of arrow heads. I pick up two perfect ones of
quartz, sharp as if just from the hand of the
maker. Still, birds are very rare. Here comes
a little flock of titmice plainly to keep me com
pany, with their black caps and throats making
them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along
the alders with a sharp, clear, lisping note.
WINTER. 133
. . . The bank is tinged with a most delicate
pink or bright flesh color where the beomyces
rosaceus grows. It is a lichen day. . . . The
sky seen here and there through the wrack,
bluish and greenish, and perchance with a vein
of red in the W., seems like the inside of a
shell, deserted of its tenant, into which I have
crawled. The willow catkins began to peep
from under their scales as early as the 26th
of last month. Many buds have lost their
scales.
Jan. 7, 185T. P. M. To Walden. ... It is
bitter cold, with a cutting N. W. wind. The pond
is now a plain snow field, but there are no tracks
of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. . . .
All animate things are reduced to their lowest
terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing
weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour
or two. Some have to make their paths two or
three times a day. The fisherman is not here,
for his lines would freeze in. I go through the
woods toward the cliffs along the side of the
Well Meadow field. There is nothing so sana
tive, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields
even now, when I meet none abroad for pleas
ure. Nothing so inspires me, and excites such
serene and profitable thought. The objects are
elevating. In the street and in society I am
almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life
134 WINTER.
is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or
respectability could in the least redeem it, dining
with the governor or a member of Congress ! !
But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpre
tending sproutlands or pastures tracked by rab
bits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day
like this, when a villager would be thinking of
his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel my
self grandly related. This cold and solitude
are friends of mine. I suppose that this value,
in my case, is equivalent to what others get by
church - going and prayer. I come to my soli
tary woodland walk as the homesick go home.
I thus dispose of the superfluous, and see things
as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told
many that I walk every day about half the day
light, but I think they do not believe it. I wish
to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the Amer
ican, out of my head and be sane a part of
every day. I wish to forget a considerable part
of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and
this requires usually to forego and forget all
personal relations so long), and therefore I come
out to these solitudes where the problem of ex
istence is simplified. I get away a mile or two
from the town, into the stillness and solitude of
nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me.
I enter some glade in the woods, perchance,
where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift
WINTER. 135
themselves above the surface of the snow, and it
is as if I had come to an open window. I see
out and around myself. Our sky-lights are thus
far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I
am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must
have a true sky-light, and that is outside the vil
lage. I am not thus expanded, recreated, en
lightened when I meet a company of men. It
chances that the sociable, the town and country
club, the farmers club does not prove a sky-light
to me. . . . The man I meet with is not often so
instructive as the silence he breaks. This still
ness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of
thoroughwort or boneset to my intellect. This
is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always
met in those places some grand, serene, immor
tal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible com
panion, and walked with him. There at last my
nerves are steadied, my senses and my mind do
their office. I am aware that most of my neigh
bors would think it a hardship to be compelled
to linger here one hour, especially this bleak
day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable
compensation for it. It is the most agreeable
thing I do. I love and celebrate nature even in
detail, because I love the scenery of these inter
views and translations. I love to remember
every creature that was at this club. I thus get
off a certain social scurf. ... I do not consider
136 WINTER.
the other animals brutes in the common sense.
I am attracted toward them undoubtedly be
cause I never heard any nonsense from them. I
have not convicted them of folly, or vanity, or
pomposity, or stupidity in dealing with me.
Their vices, at any rate, do not interfere with
me. My fairies invariably take to flight when
a man appears upon the scene. In a caucus, a
meeting-house, a lyceum, a club-room there is
nothing like this fine experience for me. But
away out of the town, on Brown s scrub oak lot,
which was sold the other day for six dollars an
acre, I have company such as England cannot
buy nor afford. This society is what I live,
what I survey for. I subscribe generously to
this all that I have and am. There in that
Well Meadow field, perhaps, I feel in my ele
ment again, as when a fish is put back into the
water. I wash off all my chagrins. All things
go smoothly as the axle of the universe.
I can remember that when I was very young I
used to have a dream night after night, over and
over again, which might have been named Rough
and Smooth. All existence, all satisfaction and
dissatisfaction, all event, was symbolized in
this way. Now I seemed to be lying and toss
ing, perchance, on a horrible, a fatal rough sur
face, which must soon indeed put an end to my
existence (though even in my dream I knew it
WINTER. 137
to be the symbol merely of my misery), and
then again, suddenly, I was lying on a delicious
smooth surface, as of a summer sea, as of gossa
mer or down, or softest plush, and it was a lux
ury to live. My waking experience always has
been and is an alternate Hough and Smooth. In
other words it is Insanity and Sanity.
Might I aspire to praise the moderate nymph
Nature, I must be like her, moderate.
Jan. 7, 1858. The storm is over, and it is
one of those beautiful winter mornings when a
vapor is seen hanging in the air between the
village and the woods. Though the snow is
only six inches deep, the yards appear full of
those beautiful crystals, star or wheel shaped
flakes, as a measure is full of grain. ... By ten
o clock I notice a very long, level stratum of
cloud not very high in the S. E. sky (all the rest
being clear), which I suspect to be the vapor
from the sea. This lasts for several hours.
These are true mornings of creation, original
and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the
past. There is no lingering of yesterday s fogs,
only such a mist as might have adorned the first
morning.
p. M. I see some tree sparrows feeding on
the fine grass seed above the snow. They are
flitting along one at a time, commonly sunk in
the snow, uttering occasionally a low, sweet war-
138 WINTER.
ble, and seemingly as happy there, and with this
wintry prospect before them for the night and
several months to come, as any man by his fire
side. One occasionally hops or flies toward an
other, and the latter suddenly jerks away from
him. They are searching or hopping up to the
fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the
snow. At length the whole ten have collected
within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after,
being alarmed, they utter a different and less
musical chirp, and flit away into an apple-tree.
Jan. 8, 1842. When, as now, in January a
south wind melts the snow, and the bare ground
appears covered with sere grass and occasionally
wilted green leaves, which seem in doubt whether
to let go their greenness quite or absorb new
juices against the coming year, in such a season
a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself,
and the south wind melts my integuments also.
Then is she my mother earth. I derive a real
vigor from the scent of the gale wafted over the
naked ground, as from strong meats, and realize
again how man is the pensioner of nature. We
are always conciliated and cheered when we are
fed by an influence, and our needs are felt to be
part of the domestic economy of nature.
What offends me most in my compositions is
the moral element in them. The repentant say
never a brave word. Their resolves should be
WINTER. 139
mumbled in silence. Strictly speaking, moral
ity is not healthy. The undeserved joys which
come uncalled, and make us more pleased than
grateful, are they that sing.
In the steadiness and equanimity of music
lies its divinity. It is the only assured tone.
When men attain to speak with as settled a
faith, and as firm assurance, their voices will
ring and their feet march as do the feet of a
soldier. The very dogs howl if time is disre
garded. Because of the perfect time of this
music-box, its harmony with itself, is its greater
dignity and stateliness. This music is more
nobly related for its more exact measure. So
simple a difference as this more even pace raises
it to the higher dignity. . . . What are ears,
what is time, that this particular series of sounds
called a strain of music can be wafted down
through the centuries from Homer to me, and
Homer have been conversant with that same
wandering and mysterious charm which never
had a local habitation in space. ... I feel a sad
cheer when I hear these lofty strains, because
there must be something in me as lofty that
hears. Ah, I hear them but rarely. . . . They
tell me the secrets of futurity. Where are its
secrets wound up but in this box? So much
hope had slumbered. There are in music such
strains as far surpass any faith which man ever
140 WINTER.
had in the loftiness of his destiny. He must be
very sad before he can comprehend them. The
clear liquid notes from the morning fields beyond
seem to come through a vale of sadness to man
which gives to all music a plaintive air. The
sadness is in the echo which our lives make and
which alone we hear. Music hath caught a
higher pace than any virtue that I know. It is
the arch reformer. It hastens the sun to his
setting. It invites him to his rising. It is the
sweetest reproach, a measured satire. I know
there is somewhere a people where this heroism
has place. Things are to be learned which it
will be sweet to learn. This cannot be all
rumor. When I hear this, I think of that ever
lasting something which is not mere sound, but
is to be a thrilling reality, and I can consent to
go about the meanest work for as many years of
time as it pleases the Hindoo penance, for a year
of the gods were as nothing to that which shall
come after. / What, then, can I do to hasten that
other time, or that space where there shall be no
time, and where these things shall be a more
living part of my life, where there will be no
discords in my life ?
Jan. 8, 1851. . . . The light of the setting
sun falling on the snow banks to-day made them
glow almost yellow. The hills seen from Fair
Haven Pond make a wholly new landscape.
WINTER. 141
Covered with snow and yellowish green or brown
pines, and shrub oaks, they look higher and
more massive. Their white mantle relates them
to the clouds in the horizon and to the sky.
Perhaps what is light-colored looks loftier than
what is dark.
Jan. 8, 1852. . . . Even as early as 3 o clock
these winter afternoons the axes in the woods
sound like night -fall, as if it were the sound
of a twilight labor.
Heading from my MSS. to Miss Emerson this
evening and using the word god, in one instance,
in perchance a merely heathenish sense, she in
quired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety,
"Is that god spelt with a little g?" Fortu
nately it was. (I had brought in the word god
without any solemnity of voice or connection.)
So I went on as if nothing had happened.
Jan. 8, 1854. . . . Stood within a rod of a
downy woodpecker on an apple - tree. How
curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its
hind head! I ask why it is there, but no
answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It
is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It
looks behind as it had a black cassock open
behind and showing a white under-garment be
tween the shoulders and down the back. It is
briskly and incessantly tapping all round the
dead limbs, but hardly twice in a place, as if to
142 WINTER.
sound the tree, and so see if it has any worm in
it, or perchance to start them. How much he
deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tap
ping and inspecting it. He it is that scatters
these fragments of bark and lichens about on the
snow at the base of trees. What a lichenest he
must be ! or rather perhaps it is fungi make his
favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs.
How briskly he glides up or drops himself down
a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping
from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rip
pling sound of his wings to another tree.
Jan. 8, 1857. ... I picked up on the bare
ice of the river ... a furry caterpillar, black
at the two ends and red-brown in the middle,
rolled into a ball or close ring, like a woodchuck.
I pressed it hard between my fingers and found
it frozen, put it into my hat, and when I took it
out in the evening, it soon began to stir, and at
length crawled about, though a portion of it
seemed not quite flexible. It took some time
for it to thaw. This is the fifth cold day, and
it must have been frozen so long.
Jan. 8, 1860. . . . To-day it is very warm
and pleasant. 2 P. M. Walk to Walden. . . .
After December all weather that is not wintry
is spring-like. How changed are our feelings
and thoughts by this more genial sky ! When I
get to the railroad, I listen from time to time to
WINTER. 143
hear some sound out of the distance which will
express the mood of nature. The cock and the
hen, that pheasant which we have domesticated,
are perhaps the most sensitive among domestic
animals to atmospheric changes. You cannot
listen a moment such a day as this, but you will
hear from far or near the clarion of the cock
celebrating this new season, yielding to the in
fluence of the south wind, or the drawling note
of the hen dreaming of eggs that are to be.
These are the sounds that fill the air, and no
hum of insects. They are affected like voyagers
approaching the land. We discover a new
world every time we see the earth again, after it
has been covered for a season with snow.
Jan. 8, 1861. . . . The Indians taught us not
only the use of corn and how to plant it, but
also of whortleberries and how to dry them for
winter, and made us baskets to put them in.
We should have hesitated long to eat some kinds
of berries, if they had not set us the example,
having learned by long experience that they
were not only harmless, but salutary. I have
added a few to my number of edible ones by
walking behind an Indian in Maine who ate
such as I never thought of eating before. Of
course they made a much greater account of wild
fruits than we do. What we call huckleberry
cake made of Indian meal and huckleberries was
144 WINTER.
evidently the principal cake of the aborigines,
and was generally known and used by them all
over this part of North America, as much as or
more than plum cake by us. They enjoyed it
ages before our ancestors heard of Indian meal
or huckleberries. If you had traveled here one
thousand years ago, it would probably have been
offered you alike on the Connecticut, the Poto
mac, the Niagara, the Ottawa, and the Missis
sippi. It appears . . . that the Indian used
the dried berries commonly in the form of
huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry por
ridge or pudding. We have no national cake so
universal and well known as this was in all parts
of the country where corn and huckleberries
grew.
Jan. 9, 1841. Each hearty stroke we deal
with these outward hands slays an inward foe.
Jan. 9, 1842. One cannot too soon forget his
errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon
them is to add to the offense. Repentance and
sorrow can only be displaced by something better,
which is as free and original as if they had not
been. Not to grieve long for any action, but to
go immediately and do freshly and otherwise,
subtracts so much from the wrong ; else we may
make the delay of repentance the punishment of
the sin. A great soul will not consider its sins as
its own, but be more absorbed in the prospect of
WINTER. 145
that valor and virtue for the future which is
more properly itself, than in these improper
actions which by being sins discover themselves
to be not itself.
Sir Walter Kaleigh s faults are those of a
courtier and a soldier. In his counsels and
aphorisms we see not unfrequently the haste and
rashness of a boy. His philosophy was not
wide nor deep, but continually giving way to
the generosity of his nature. What he touches
he adorns by his greater humanity and native
nobleness, but he touches not the true and origi
nal. . . . He seems to have been fitted by his
genius for short flights of impulsive poetry, but
not for the sustained loftiness of Shakespeare
or Milton. He was not wise nor a seer in any
sense, but rather one of nature s nobility, the
most generous nature which can be found to
linger in the purlieus of a court. His was a
singularly perverted genius, with a great incli
nation to originality and freedom, and yet who
never steered his own course. Of so fair and
susceptible a nature, rather than broad or deep,
that he lingered to slake his thirst at the
nearest and even somewhat turbid wells of truth
and beauty. His homage to the less fair or
noble left no space for homage to the all fair.
The misfortune of his circumstances or rather of t
the man appears in the fact that he was the
146 WINTER.
author of " Maxims of State," " The Cabinet
Council," and " The Soul s Errand."
Jan. 9, 1852. . . . Where a path has been
shoveled through drifts in the road, I see ...
little heavens in the crannies and crevices. The
deeper they are, and the larger masses they are
surrounded by, the darker blue they are. Some
are a very light blue with a tinge of green.
Methinks I oftenest see this when it is snowing.
At any rate, the atmosphere must be in a pecul
iar state. Apparently the snow absorbs the
other rays, and reflects the blue. It has strained
the air, and only the blue rays have passed
through the sieve. . . . Into every track which
the teamster makes this elysian, empyrean at
mosphere rushes.
Jan. 9, 1853. 3 p. M. To Walden and
Cliffs. The telegraph harp again. Always the
same unrememberable revelation it is to me.
I never hear it without thinking of Greece.
How the Greeks harped upon the words, immor
tal, ambrosial. They are what it says. It
stings my ear with everlasting truth. It allies
Concord to Athens, and both to Elysium. It
always . . . makes me sane, reverses my views
of things. I get down the railroad till I hear
that which makes all the world a lie. When
the . . . west wind sweeps this wire, I rise to
the height of my being. . . . This wire is my
WINTER. 147
redeemer. It always brings a special and a gen
eral message to me from the highest. Day
before yesterday I looked at the mangled and
blackened bodies of men which had been blown
up by powder, and felt that the lives of men are
not innocent, and that there was an avenging
power in nature. To-day I hear this immortal
melody while the west wind is blowing balmily
on my cheek and a roseate sunset seems to be
preparing. . . .
\ As I climbed the cliff, I paused in the sun
and sat on a dry rock, dreaming. I thought of
those summery hours, when time is tinged with
eternity, runs into it, and becomes of one stuff
with it, how much, how perhaps all that is best
in our experience in middle life, may be resolved
into the memory of our youth ! Pulling up the
Johnswort on the face of the cliff, I am sur
prised to see the signs of unceasing growth
about the roots, fresh shoots two inches long,
white with red leafets, and all the radical part
quite green. The leaves of the crowfoot also
are quite green, and carry me forward to spring.
I dig one up with a stick, and pulling it to
pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant,
just beneath the ground, surrounded by all- the
tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom
bud about half as big as the head of a pin, per
fectly white. (?) (I open one next day, and it is
148 WINTER.
yellow.) There it patiently sits and slumbers,
how full of faith, informed of a spring which the
world has never seen, the promise and prophecy
of it, shaped somewhat like some Eastern tem
ples in which a bud-shaped dome o ertops the
whole. It affected me this tender dome-like
bud within the bosom of the earth, like a temple
upon its surface resounding with the worship of
votaries. Methought I saw the priests with
yellow robes within it. ... It will go forth in
April, this vestal, now cherishing here her fire,
to be married to the sun. How innocent are
nature s purposes ! How unambitious !
I saw to-day the reflected sunset sky in the
river, but the colors in the reflection were differ
ent from those in the sky. In the latter were
dark clouds with coppery or dun-colored under
sides ; in the water were dun-colored clouds
with bluish-green patches or bars.
Jan. 9, 1855. What a strong and hearty,
but reckless, hit-or-miss style had some of the
early writers of New England, like Josselyn and
William Wood, and others elsewhere in those
days ; as if they spoke with a relish, smacking
their lips like a coach whip, caring more to
speak heartily than scientifically true. They
are not to be caught napping by the wonders of
nature in a new country, and perhaps are often
more ready to appreciate them than she is to
WINTER. 149
exhibit them. They give you one piece* of
nature at any rate, and that is themselves. . . .
The strong new soil speaks through them. I
have just been reading somewhat in Wood s
" New England s Prospect." He speaks a good
word for New England, indeed will come very
near lying for her, and when he doubts the just
ness of his praise, he brings it out not the less
soundly ; as who cares if it is not so, we love her
not the less for all that. Certainly that genera
tion stood nearer to nature, nearer to the facts
than this, and hence their books have more life
in them.
Jan. 9, 1858. Snows again. . . . The snow
is very moist, with large flakes. Looking to
ward Trillium wood, the nearer flakes appear to
move quite swiftly, often making the impression
of a continuous white line. They are also seen
to move directly, and nearly horizontally. But
the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the
air, as if uncertain how they will approach the
earth, or even to cross the course of the former,
and are always seen as simple and distinct
flakes. I think that this difference is simply
owing to the fact that the former pass quickly
over the field of view, while the latter are much
longer in it.
Jan. 9, 1860. ... I hear that , a rich
old farmer, who lives in a large house, with a
150 WINTER.
male housekeeper, and no other family, gets up
at three or four o clock these winter mornings,
and milks seventeen cows regularly. When
asked why he works so hard, he answers that
the poor are obliged to work hard. Only
think what a creature of fate he is, this old
Jotun, milking his seventeen cows, though the
thermometer goes down to 25, and not know
ing why he does it. ... Think how helpless,
a rich man who can only do as he has done
and as his neighbors do, one or all of them.
What an account he will have to give of him
self ! He spent some time in a world, alternately
cold and warm, and every winter morning with
lantern in hand, when the first goblins were
playing their tricks, he resolutely accomplished
his task, milked his seventeen cows, while the
man-housekeeper prepared his breakfast. . . .
Think how tenaciously every man does his deed
of some kind or other, though it be idleness !
He is rich, dependent on nobody, and nobody is
dependent on him, has as good health as the
average, at least, can do as he pleases, as we
say, yet he gravely rises every morning by can
dle-light, dons his cowhide boots and his frock,
takes his lantern, and wends his way to the barn
and milks his seventeen cows, milking with one
hand, while he warms the other against the cow
or his person. This is but the beginning of his
WINTER. 151
day, and his Augean stable work, so serious is
the life he lives.
Jan. 10, 1856. The weather has considera
bly moderated, 2 at breakfast time. It was
8 at seven last evening, but this has been the
coldest night probably. You lie with your feet
or legs curled up, waiting for the morning, the
sheets shining with frost about your mouth.
Water left by the stove is frozen thick, and
what you sprinkle in bathing falls on the floor,
ice. The house plants are all frozen, and soon
droop and turn black. I look out on the roof
of a cottage covered a foot deep with snow,
wondering how the poor children in its garret,
with their few rags, contrive to keep their toes
warm. I mark the white smoke from its chimney
whose contracted wreaths are soon dissipated in
this stinging air, and think of the size of their
wood pile. And again I try to realize how they
panted for a breath of cool air those sultry
nights last summer. Recall, realize now, if
you can, the hum of the mosquito.
It seems that the snow-storm of Saturday
night was a remarkable one, reaching many
hundred miles along the coast. It is said that
some thousands passed the night in the cars.
The kitchen windows were magnificent last
night with their frost sheaves, surpassing any
cut or ground glass.
152 WINTER.
I love to wade and flounder through the
swamp now, these bitter cold days, when the
snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel
but little way from the town to get to a Nova
Zembla solitude, to wade through the swamps,
all snowed up, untracked by man, into which the
fine dry snow is still drifting till it is even with
the tops of the water andromeda, and half way
up the high blueberry bushes. I penetrate to
islets inaccessible in summer, my feet slumping
to the sphagnum far out of sight beneath, where
the alderberry glows yet, . . . and perchance
a single tree sparrow lisps by my side ; where
there are few tracks even of wild animals. Per
haps only a mouse or two have burrowed up by
the side of some twig, and hopped away in
straight lines on the surface of the light, deep
snow, as if too timid to delay, to another hole
by the side of another bush, and a few rabbits
have run in a path amid the blueberries and
alders about the edge of the swamp. This is
instead of a Polar Expedition, and going after
Franklin. There is but little life and the ob
jects are few, it is true. We are reduced to
admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark,
like the rabbits and mice, the great red and
forward looking buds of the azalea, the plump
red ones of the blueberry, and the fine, sharp red
ones of the panicled andromeda sleeping along
WINTER. 153
its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid
growing dogwood, the pale brown and cracked
blueberry, etc. Even a little shining bud which
lies sleeping behind its twig, perhaps half con
cealed by ice, is object enough. I feel myself
upborne on the andromeda bushes beneath the
snow as on a springy basket-work. Then down
I go, up to my middle in the deep but silent
snow, which has no sympathy with my mishap.
Beneath its level, how many sweet berries will be
hanging next August ! This freezing weather
I see the pumps dressed in mats and old clothes,
or bundled up in straw. Fortunate he who has
placed his cottage on the south side of some
high hill or some dense wood, and not in the
middle of the Great Fields where there is no hill
nor tree to shelter it. There the winds have
full sweep, and such a day as yesterday, the
house is but a fence to stay the drifting snow.
Such is the piercing wind, no man loiters be
tween his house and barn. The road track is
soon obliterated, and the path which leads round
to the back of the house, dug this morning, is
filled up again, and you can no longer see the
tracks of the master of the house who only an
hour ago took refuge in some half -subterranean
apartment there. You know only by some white
wreath of smoke from his chimney, which is at
once snapped up by the hungry air, that he sits
154 WINTER.
warming his wits there within, studying the
almanac to learn how long it is before spring.
But his neighbor, who, only half a mile off, has
placed his house in the shelter of a wood, is dig
ging out of a drift his pile of roots and stumps,
hauled from the swamp, at which he regularly
dulls his axe and saw, reducing them to billets
that will fit into his stove. With comparative
safety and even comfort he labors at this mine.
As for the other, the windows give no sign of
inhabitants, for they are frosted over as if they
were ground glass, and the curtains are down
beside. ... No sound arrives from within. It
remains only to examine the chimney s nostrils.
I look very sharp, and fancy that I see some
smoke against the sky there, but this is decep
tive, for as we are accustomed to walk up to an
empty fire-place and imagine that we feel some
heat from it, so I have convinced myself that I
saw smoke issuing from the chimney of a house
which had not been inhabited for twenty years.
I had so vivid an idea of smoke that no painter
could have matched my imagination. It was as
if the spirits of the former inhabitants revisiting
their old haunts were once more boiling a spirit
ual kettle below.
Jan. 10, 1858. The N. side of Walden is a
warm walk in sunny weather. If you are sick
and despairing, go forth in winter and see the
WINTER. 155
red alder catkins dangling at the extremity of
the twigs all in the wintry air, like long, hard
mulberries, promising a new spring and the ful
fillment of all our hopes. We prize any ten
derness, any softening in the winter, catkins,
birds nests, insect life, etc. The most I get,
perchance, is the sight of a mulberry-like red
catkin, which I know has a dormant life in it
seemingly greater than my own.
Jan. 10, 1859. . . . The alder is one of the
prettiest trees and shrubs in the winter. It is
evidently so full of life with its conspicuously
pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides.
It seems to dread the winter less than other
plants. It has a certain heyday and cheery
look, less stiff than most, with more of the flex
ible grace of summer. With those dangling
clusters of red catkins which it switches in the
face of winter, it brags for all vegetation. It is
not daunted by the cold, but still hangs grace
fully over the frozen stream.
Jan. 10, 1859. ... I come across to the road
S. of the hill, to see the pink on the snow-
clad hill at sunset. ... I walk back and forth
in the road waiting for its appearance. The
windows on the skirts of the village reflect the
setting sun with intense brilliancy, a dazzling
glitter, it is so cold. Standing thus on one side
of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected
156 WINTER.
from the snow there about fifteen minutes be
fore the sun sets. This gradually deepens to
purple and violet in some places, and the pink is
very distinct, especially when, after looking at
the simply white snow on other sides, you turn
your eyes to the hill. Even after all direct sun
light is withdrawn from the hill-top, as well as
from the valley in which you stand, you see, if
you are prepared to discern it, a faint and deli
cate tinge of purple and violet there. This was
on a very clear and cold evening when the ther
mometer was 6.
This is one of the phenomena of the winter
sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the
brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you, as
you are facing the sun.
The cold rapidly increases, and it is 14 in
the evening. I hear the ground crack with a
very loud sound, and a great jar in the evening
and in the course of the night several times. It
is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the
Acton powder mills.
Jan. 11, 1839.
THE THAW.
I saw the civil sun drying earth s tears,
Her tears of joy that only faster flowed.
Fain would I stretch me by the highway side
To thaw and trickle with the melting- snow,
That mingled, soul and body, with the tide,
I too may through the pores of nature flow.
WINTER. 157
Jan. 11, 1852. . . . The glory of these after
noons, though the sky may be mostly overcast,
is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale green
ish-yellow patches of sky in the west just before
sunset. t The whole cope of heaven seen at once
is never so elysian; windows to heaven, the
heavenward windows of the earth. The end of
the day is truly Hesperian. ...
We sometimes find ourselves living fast, un-
profitably, and coarsely even, as we catch our
selves eating our meals in unaccountable haste.
But in one sen.se we cannot live too leisurely.
Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the
pace of the seasons, have leisure to attend to
every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain
every thought that comes to you. Let your life
be a leisurely progress through the realms of
nature, even in guest-quarters. . . .
The question is not where did the traveler go ?
What places did he see ? It would be difficult
to choose between places. But who was the
traveler ? How did he travel ? How genuine
an experience did he get ? For traveling is, in
the main, like as if you stayed at home, and then
the question is, How do you live and conduct
yourself at home ? What I mean is that it
might be hard to decide whether I would travel
to Lake Superior or Labrador or Florida. Per
haps none would be worth the while if I went
158 WINTER.
by the usual mode. But if I travel in a simple,
primitive, original manner, standing in a truer
relation to men and nature, travel away from
the old and commonplace, get some honest ex
perience of life, if only out of my feet and home
sickness, then it becomes less important whither
I go or how far. I so see the world from a new
and more commanding point of view. Perhaps
it is easier to live a true and natural life while
traveling, as one can move about less awkwardly
than he can stand still.
Jan. 11, 1857. . . . For some years past I
have partially offered myself as a lecturer, have
been advertised as such several years. Yet I
had but two or three invitations to lecture in
a year, and some years none at all. I congratu
late myself on having been permitted to stay at
home thus. I am so much richer for it. I do
not see what I should have got of much value,
except money, by going about. But I do see
what I should have lost. It seems to me that I
have a longer and more liberal lease of life thus.
I cannot afford to be telling my experience, es
pecially to those who perhaps will take no inter
est in it. I wish to be getting experience. You
might as well recommend to a bear to leave his
hollow tree and run about all winter scratch
ing at all the hollow trees in the woods. He
would be leaner in the spring than if he had
WINTER. 159
stayed at home and sucked his claws. As for
the lecture-goers, it is none of their business
what I think. I perceive that most make a great
account of their relations, more or less personal
or direct, to many men, coining before them as
lecturers, writers, or public men. But all this is
impertinent and unprofitable to me. I never get
recognized, nor was recognized by a crowd of
men. I was never assured of their existence,
nor they of mine.
There was wit and even poetry in the negro s
answer to the man who tried to persuade him
that the slaves would not be obliged to work in
heaven, " Oh, you g way, Massa, I know
better. If dere s no work for cullered folks up
dar, dey 11 make some fur em, and if dere s
nuffin better to do, dey 11 make em shub de
clouds along. You can t fool dis chile, Massa."
I was describing, the other day, my success in
solitary and distant woodland walking outside
the town. I do not go there to get my dinner,
but to get that sustenance which dinners only
preserve me to enjoy, without which dinners are
a vain repetition. But how little men can help
me in this, only by having a kindred experience.
Of what use to tell them of my happiness.
Thus, if ever we have anything important to
say, it might be introduced with the remark, it
is nothing to you, in particular. It is none of
160 WINTER.
your business, I know. That is what might be
called going into good society. I never chanced
to meet with any man so cheering and elevating
and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive as the
stillness and solitude of the Well Meadow field.
Men even think me odd and perverse because I
do not prefer their society to this Nymph or
Wood God rather. But I have tried them. I
have sat down with a dozen of them together in
a club. . . .
They did not inspire me. One or another
abused our ears with many words and a few
thoughts which were not theirs. There was
very little genuine goodness apparent. We are
such hollow pretenders. I lost my time. But
out there ! Who shall criticise that companion ?
It is like the hone to the knife. I bathe in that
element, and am cleansed of all social impurities.
I become a witness with unprejudiced senses to
the order of the universe. There is nothing
petty or impertinent, none to say, " See what a
great man I am ! " There, chiefly, and not in
the society of wits, am I cognizant of wit. Shall
I prefer a part, an infinitely small fraction to
the whole. There I get my underpinnings laid
and repaired, cemented, leveled. There is my
country club. We dine at the sign of the
Shrub Oak, the new Albion House.
I demand of my companion some evidence
WINTER. 161
that he has traveled farther than to the sources
of the Nile, that he has been out of town, out
of the house, not that he can tell a good story,
but that he can keep a good silence. Has he
attended to a silence more significant than any
story ? Did he ever get out of the road which
all men and fools travel ? You call yourself a
great traveler, perhaps, but can you get beyond
the influence of a certain class of ideas ?
Jan. 11, 1859. At 6 A. M. 22, and how
much lower I know not, the mercury [?] in our
thermometer having gone into the bulb, but
that is said to be the lowest. Going to Boston
to-day, I find that the cracking of the ground
last night is the subject of conversation in the
cars, and that it was quite general. I see many
cracks in Cambridge and Concord. It would
appear, then, that the ground cracks on the ad
vent of very severe cold weather. I had not
heard it before this winter. It was so when I
went to Amherst a winter or two ago.
Jan. 11, 1861. H M brings me the
contents of a crow s stomach in alcohol. It was
killed in the village within a day or two. It is
quite a mass of frozen-thawed apple pulp and
skin, with a good many pieces of skunk-cabbage
berries, a quarter of an inch or less in diameter,
and commonly showing the pale brown or black
ish outside, interspersed, looking like bits of
162 WINTER.
acorns, never a whole or even half a berry, and
two little bones as of frogs, or mice, or tadpoles.
Also a street pebble, a quarter of an inch in
diameter, hard to be distinguished in appearance
from the cabbage seeds.
Jan. 12, 1852. ... I sometimes think that I
may go forth and walk hard and earnestly, and
live a more substantial life, get a glorious ex
perience, be much abroad in heat and cold, day
and night, live more, expend more atmospheres,
be weary often, etc., etc. But then swiftly the
thought comes to me, Go not so far out of your
way for a truer life, keep strictly onward in that
path alone which your genius points out, do the
things which lie nearest to you, but which are
difficult to do, live a purer, a more thoughtful
and laborious life, more true to your friends and
neighbors, more noble and magnanimous, and
that will be better than a wild walk. To live in
relations of truth and sincerity with men is to
dwell in a frontier country. What a wild and
unfrequented wilderness that would be ! What
Saguenays of magnanimity that might be ex
plored ! Then talk about traveling this way
and that, as if seeing were all in the eyes, and
a man could sufficiently report what he stood
bodily before, when the seeing depends ever on
the being. All report of travel is the report of
victory or defeat, of a contest with every event
WINTER. 163
and phenomenon, and how you come out of it.
A blind man who possesses inward truth and
consistency will see more than one who has
faultless eyes, but no serious and laborious, or
strenuous soul to look through them. As if the
eyes were the only part of the man that traveled.
Men convert their property into cash, ministers
fall sick to obtain the assistance of their par
ishes, all chaffer with sea-captains, etc., as if
the whole object were to get conveyed to some
part of the world, a pair of eyes merely. A
telescope conveyed to and set up at the Cape
of Good Hope at great expense, and only a
Bushman to look through it. Nothing like a
little activity, called life, if it were only walking
much in a day, to keep the eye in good order,
no such collyrium.
Jan. 12, 1855. p. M. To Flint s Pond via
Minott s meadow. After a spitting of snow in
the forenoon, I see the blue sky here and there.
The sun is coming out. It is still and warm.
The earth is two thirds bare. I walk along the
Mill Brook below Emerson s, looking into it
for some life. Perhaps what most moves us in
winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer.
. . . What beauty in the running brooks ! what
life ! what society ! The cold is merely super
ficial. It is summer still at the core. Far,
far within, it is in the cawing of the crow, the
164 WINTER.
crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on
our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a
crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen
wood side, as if deadened by the spring-like
vapor which the sun is drawing from the
ground. It mingles with the slight murmur of
the village, the sound of children at play, as
one stream empties gently into another, and the
wild and tame are one. What a delicious
sound ! It is not merely crow calling to crow,
for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great
creature with him. If he has voice, I have ears.
I can hear when he calls, and have engaged not
to shoot or stone him, if he will caw to me
each spring. On the one hand, it may be, is
the sound of children at school saying their a,
b, abs ; on the other, far in the wood-fringed
horizon, the cawing of crows from their blessed
eternal vacation, out at their long recess, chil
dren who have got dismissed, while the vapor, as
incense, goes up from all the fields of the spring
(if it were spring). Bless the Lord, O my
soul, bless Him for wildness, for crows that will
not alight within gunshot, and bless Him for
hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard.
Jan. 12, 1859. Mr. Farmer brings me a
hawk which he thinks has caught thirty or forty
of his chickens since summer, for he has lost so
many, and he has seen a hawk like this catch
WINTER. 165
some of them. Thinks he has seen this same
one sitting a long time upright on a tree, high
or low, about his premises, and when at length a
hen or this year s chicken had strayed far from
the rest, he skimmed along and picked it up
without pausing, and bore it off, the chicken not
having seen him approaching. He found the
hawk caught by one leg and frozen to death in a
trap which he had set for mink by a spring and
baited with fish. This one measures nineteen
by forty-two inches, and is, according to Wilson
and Nuttall, a young Falco lineatus, or red-
shouldered hawk. It might as well be called the
red or rusty-breasted hawk. According to the
"Birds of Long Island," mine is the old bird.(?)
Nuttall says it lives on frogs, crayfish, etc., and
does not go far north, not even to Massachusetts,
he thought. Its note, Kee-oo. He never saw
one soar, at least in winter. . . .
Farmer says that he saw what he calls the
common hen hawk, soaring high, with appar
ently a chicken in its claws, while a young hawk
circled beneath, when the former suddenly let
drop the chicken. But the young one failing to
catch it, he shot down like lightning, and caught
and bore off the falling chicken before it reached
the earth.
Jan. 12, 1860. ... I go forth to walk on
the Hill at 3 P. M. Thermometer about +30.
166 WINTER.
It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now, it
having just ceased falling. You are struck by
its peculiar tracklessness, as if it were a thick,
white blanket just spread. As it were, each
snow-flake lies as it first fell, or there is a regu
lar gradation from the denser bottom up to the
surface which is perfectly light, and as it were
fringed with the last flakes that fell. This was
a star snow, dry, but the stars of considerable
size. It lies up light as down. When I look
closely, it seems to be chiefly composed of crys
tals in which the six rays or leaflets are more or
less perfect, with a cottony powder intermixed.
It is not yet in the least melted by the sun.
The sun is out very bright and pretty warm,
and going from it, I see a myriad sparkling
points scattered over the surface of the snow,
little mirror-like facets, which on examination I
find to be, each, one of those star wheels, more
or less entire, from one eighth to one third of an
inch in diameter, which has fallen in the proper
position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun,
as if it were a thin and uninterrupted scale of
mica. Such is the glitter or sparkle on the sur
face of such a snow freshly fallen when the sun
comes out, and you walk from it, the points of
light constantly changing. I suspect that these
are good evidence of the freshness of the snow.
The sun and wind have not yet destroyed these
delicate reflectors. ,
WINTER. 167
As I stand by the hemlocks, I am greeted by
the lively and unusually prolonged tche -de -de
de-de-de of a little flock of chickadees. The
snow has ceased falling, the sun comes out, and
it is warm and still, and this flock of chickadees,
feeling the influences of this genial season, have
begun to flit amid the snow-covered fans of the
hemlocks, jarring down the snow, for there are
hardly bare twigs enough for them to rest on, or
they plume themselves in some sunny recess on
the sunny side of the tree, only pausing to utter
their tche-de-de-de.
Jan. 13, 1841. We should offer up our per
fect (rcAeta) thoughts to the gods daily. Our
writing should be hymns and psalms. Who
keeps a journal is purveyor to the gods. There
are two sides to every sentence. The one is
contiguous to me, but the other faces the gods,
and no man ever fronted it. When I utter a
thought, I launch a vessel which never sails in
my harbor more, but goes sheer off into the
deep. Consequently it demands a godlike in
sight, a fronting view, to read what was greatly
written.
Jan. 13, 1852. told me this afternoon
of a white pine in Carlisle which the owner was
offered thirty dollars for and refused. He had
bought the lot for the sake of the tree which he
left standing.
168 WINTER.
Here I am on the Cliffs at half-past three or
four o clock. The snow more than a foot deep
over all the land. Few, if any, leave the beaten
paths. A few clouds are floating overhead,
downy and dark. Clear sky and bright sun, yet
no redness. Remarkable, yet admirable, moder
ation that this should be confined to the morning
and evening. Greeks were they who did it. A
mother-o -pearl tint at the utmost they will give
you at mid-day, and this but rarely. Singular
enough ! twenty minutes later, looking up, I saw
a long, light-textured cloud, stretching from N.
to S. with a dunnish mass and an enlightened
border, with its under edge toward the west all
beautiful mother-o -pearl, as remarkable as a
rainbow, stretching over half the heavens, and
underneath it in the W. were flitting mother-
o -pearl clouds which change their loose-tex
tured form, and melt rapidly away, never any so
fast, even while I write. Before I can complete
this sentence, I look up and they are gone, like
smoke or rather the steam from the engine in
the winter air. Even a considerable cloud, like
a fabulous Atlantis or unfortunate Isle in the
Hesperian sea, is dissolved and dispersed in a
minute or two, and nothing is left but the pure
ether. Then another comes by magic, is born
out of the pure blue, empyrean with beautiful
mother-o -pearl tints, where not a shred of vapor
WINTER. 169
was to be seeu before, not enough to stain a
glass, or polished steel blade. It grows more
light and porous, the blue deeps are seen
through it here and there, only a few flocks are
left, and now these, too, have disappeared, and
no one knows whither it is gone. You are com
pelled to look at the sky, for the earth is in
visible. . . .
Why can t I go to his office and talk with
, and learn his facts ? But I should im
pose a certain restraint on him. We are strictly
confined to our men, to whom we give liberty. . . .
We forget to strive and aspire, to do better
even than is expected of us. I cannot stay to
be congratulated. I would leave the world
behind me. We must withdraw from our flat
terers, even from our friends. They drag us
down. It is rare that we use our thinking
faculty as resolutely as an Irishman his spade.
To please our friends and relatives we turn out
our silver ore in cart-loads, while we neglect to
work our mines of gold known only to ourselves,
far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush
in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering
treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the
price of our freedom to make that known.
Jan. 13, 1854. . . . In the deep hollow this side
of Brittan s Camp, I heard a singular buzzing
sound from the ground exactly like that of a large
170 WINTER.
fly or bee in a spider s web. I kneeled down
and with pains traced it to a small bare spot as
big as my hand amid the snow, and searched
there amid the grass and stubble for several
minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers,
till, when I got nearest to the spot, not know
ing but I might be stung, I used a stick. The
sound was incessant, like that of a large fly in
agony. But though it made my ears ache, and
I had my stick directly on the spot, I could find
neither prey nor oppression. At length I found
that I interrupted or changed the tone with my
stick, and so traced it to a few spires of dead
grass, occupying about one quarter of an inch in
diameter, and standing in the melted snow water.
When I bent these one side, it produced a duller
and baser tone. It was a sound issuing from
the earth, and as I stooped over it, the thought
came over me that it might be the first puling,
infantine cry of an earthquake, which would ere
long ingulf me. Perhaps it was air confined
under the frozen ground, now expanded by the
thaw, and escaping upward through the water
by a hollow grass stem. I left it after ten min
utes buzzing as loudly as at first. Could hear it
more than a rod away.
Schoolcraft says [of Ehode Island], "The
present name is derived from the Dutch, who
called it Roode Eylant (Red Island) from the
WINTER. 171
autumnal color of its foliage." (Coll. R. I. Hist.
Soc. vol. iii.)
Jan. 13, 1856. . . . Took to pieces a pensile
nest which I found . . . probably a vireo s,
may be a red-eye s. In our workshops we
pride ourselves on discovering a use for what
had been previously regarded as waste, but how
partial and accidental our economy compared
with nature s. In nature nothing is wasted.
Every decayed leaf and twig and fibre is only
the better fitted to serve in some other depart
ment, and all at last are gathered in her com
post heap. What a wonderful genius it is that
leads the vireo to select the tough fibre of the
inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses,
for its basket, the elastic pine needles and the
twigs curved as they dried to give it form, and,
as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., to bind it
together with. I suspect that extensive use is
made of these abandoned cocoons by the birds,
and they, if anybody, know where to find them.
There were at least seven materials used in con
structing this nest, and the bird visited as many
distinct localities many times, always with the
purpose or design of finding some particular one
of these materials, as much as if it had said to
itself, " Now I will go and get some old hor
net s nest from one of those that I saw last fall,
down in the maple swamp, perhaps thrust my
172 WINTER.
bill into them, or some silk from those cocoons I
saw this morning."
Jan. 13, 1857. I hear one thrumming a guitar
below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I
have lived. What a comment on our life is the
least strain of music ! It lifts me above all the
dust and mire of the universe. I soar or hover
with clean skirts over the field of my life. It
is ever life within life in concentric spheres.
The field wherein I toil or rust at any time is at
the same time the field for such different kinds
of life ! The farmer s boy or hired man has an
instinct which tells him as much indistinctly;
hence his dreams and his restlessness, hence
even it is that he wants money to realize his
dream with. The identical field where I am
leading my humdrum life, let but a strain of
music be heard there, is seen to be the field of
some unrecorded crusade or tournament, the
thought of which excites in us an ecstasy of joy.
The way in which I am affected by this faint
thrumming advertises me that there is still
some health and immortality in the springs of
me. What an elixir is this sound ! I who but
lately came and went and lived under a dish
cover live now under the heavens. It releases
me, bursts my bonds. Almost all, perhaps all,
our life is, speaking comparatively, a stereo
typed despair, i. e., we never at any time realize
WINTER. 173
the full grandeur of our destiny. We habit
ually, forever and ever, underrate our fate.
Talk of infidels, why, all of the race of man,
except in the rarest moments when they are
lifted above themselves by an ecstasy, are infi
dels. With the very best disposition, what does
my belief amount to ? This poor, timid, unen
lightened, thick - skinned creature, what can it
believe? I am, of course, hopelessly ignorant
and unbelieving until some divinity stirs within
me. Ninety-nine one hundredths of our lives
we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time
to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.
We hear the kindred vibrations, music ! and
we put out our dormant feelers into the limits
of the universe. We attain to wisdom that
passeth understanding. The stable continents
undulate. The hard and fixed becomes fluid.
" Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man."
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am
invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the
earliest times, and to the latest.
There are infinite degrees of life, from that
which is next to sleep and death to that which
is forever awake and immortal. We must not
confound man with man. We cannot conceive
of a greater difference than that between the
life of one man and that of another. I am con-
174 WINTER.
strained to believe that the mass of men are
never so lifted above themselves that their des
tiny is seen to be transcendently beautiful and
grand.
Jan. 13, 1858. ... At Jonathan Buffum s,
Lynn. Lecture in John B. Alley s parlor. Mr.
J. Buffum describes to me ancient wolf traps,
made probably by the early settlers in Lynn,
perhaps after an Indian model; one some two
miles from the shore near Saugus, another,
more northerly, holes say seven feet deep, about
as long, and some three feet wide, stoned up
very smoothly and perhaps converging a little,
so that the wolf could not get out. Tradition
says that a wolf and a squaw were one morning
found in the same hole, staring at each other.
Jan. 13, 1860. . . . Farmer says that he remem
bers his father saying that as he stood in a field
once, he saw a hawk soaring above and eying
something on the ground. Looking round, he
saw a weasel there eying the hawk. Just then
the hawk stooped, and the weasel at the same
instant sprang upon him. Up went the hawk with
the weasel, but by and by began to come down
as fast as he went up, rolling over and over, till
he struck the ground. His father going to him,
raised him up, when out hopped the weasel
from under his wing, and ran off, none the
worse for his fall.
WINTER. 175
Jan. 14, 1852. ... I love to see now a cock
of deep, reddish meadow hay full of ferns and
other meadow plants of the coarsest kind. My
imagination supplies the green and the hum of
bees. What a memento of summer such a hay
cock ! To stand beside one covered with snow
in winter through which the dry meadow plants
peep out ! And yet our hopes survive. . . .
As usual, there was no blueness in the ruts
and crevices of the snow to-day. What kind of
atmosphere does this require? When I ob
served it the other day, it was a rather moist
air, some snow falling, the sky completely over
cast, and the weather not very cold. It is
one of the most interesting phenomena of the
winter.
Jan. 14, 1854. If the writers of the brazen
age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself
to them, and leave those of the Augustan age
to dust and the bookworms. . . .
Cato makes the vineyard of first importance
to a farm ; second, a well-watered garden ; third,
a willow plantation (salictum) ; fourth, an olive
yard (oletum) ; fifth, a meadow, or grass ground
(pratum) ; sixth, a grain field or tillage (campus
frumentarius) ; seventh, a wood for fuel (?)
(silva ccedua) ; Varro speaks of planting and
cultivating this ; eighth, an arbustum ; Colu-
mella says it is a plantation of elms, and for
176 WINTER.
vines to rest on ; ninth, a wood that yields mast
(jglandaria silva). He says elsewhere the ar-
bustum yields llgna et virgce.
He says, " In early manhood, the master of a
family must study to plant his ground. As for
building, he must think a long time about it
(diu cogitare). He must not think about plant
ing, but do it. When he gets to be thirty-six
years old, then let him build, if he has his
ground planted. So build that the villa may
not have to seek the farm, nor the farm the
villa." This contains sound advice, as pertinent
now as ever. ..." If you have done one thing
late, you will do all your work late," says Cato
to the farmer. They raised a sallow (safo cem),
to tie vines with. Ground subject to fogs is
called nebulosus. . . . Oxen " must have muz
zles (or little baskets, fiscellas) that they may
not go in quest of grass (ne herbam sectentur),
when they plow."
Jan. 14, 1855. Skated to Baker Farm with
a rapidity which astonished myself, before the
wind, feeling the rise and fall (the water having
settled in the suddenly cold night) which I had
not time to see. ... A man feels like a new
creature, a deer perhaps, moving at this rate.
He takes new possession of nature in the name
of his own majesty. There was I, and there,
and there, as Mercury went down the Idaean
WINTER. 177
mountains. I judged that in a quarter of an
hour I was three and one half miles from home
without having made any particular exertion.
Jan. 14, 1857. Up Assabet on ice. ... I
notice on the black willows, and also on
the alders and white maples overhanging the
stream, numerous dirty-white cocoons, about an
inch long, attached by their sides to the base of
the recent twigs, and disguised by dry leaves
curled about them, a sort of fruit which these
trees bear now. The leaves are not attached to
the twigs, but artfully arranged about, and
fastened to the cocoons. Almost every little
cluster of leaves contains a cocoon, apparently
of one species, so that often when you would
think the trees were retaining their leaves, it is
not the trees, but the caterpillars that have re
tained them. I do not see a cluster of leaves
on a maple, unless on a dead twig, but it con
ceals a cocoon. Yet I cannot find one alive.
They are all crumbled within. The black wil
lows retain very few of their narrow curled
leaves here and there, like the terminal leaflet
of a fern. The maples and alders scarcely any
ever. Yet these few are just enough to with
draw attention from those which surround the
cocoons. What kind of understanding was
there between the mind that determined that
these leaves should hang on during the winter
178 WINTER.
and that of the worm that fastened a few of
these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise
it ? I thus walk along the edge of the trees and
bushes which overharg the stream, gathering
the cocoons which probably were thought to be
doubly secure here. These cocoons, of course,
were attached before the leaves had fallen. Al
most every one is already empty, or contains only
the relics of a nymph. It has been attacked and
devoured by some foe. These numerous cocoons
attached to the twigs overhanging the stream in
the still and biting winter day suggest a certain
fertility in the river borders, impart a kind of
life to them, and so are company to me. There
is so much more life than is suspected in the
most solitary and dreary scene. They are as
much as the lisping of a chickadee.
Jan. 14, 1858. Mr. Buffum says that in
18171819 he saw the sea-serpent at Swamp-
scott, and so did several hundred others. He
was to be seen off and on for some time. There
were many people on the beach the first time in
carriages partly in the water, and the serpent
came so near that they, thinking he might come
ashore, involuntarily turned their horses to the
shore, as with a general consent, and this move
ment caused him to sheer off also. The road
from Boston was lined with people directly,
coming to see the monster. Prince came with
WINTER. 179
his spy-glass, saw, and printed his account of
him. Buffum says he has seen him twenty
times ; once alone from the rocks at Little
Nahant, where he passed along close to the shore
just beneath the surface, and within fifty or
sixty feet of him, so that he could have touched
him with a very long pole, if he had dared to.
Buffum is about sixty, and it should be said, as
affecting the value of his evidence, that he is a
firm believer in Spiritualism.
Jan. 14, 1860. ... It is a mild day, and I
notice, what I have not observed for some
time, that blueness of the air only to be per
ceived in a mild day. I see it between me and
woods half a mile distant. The softening of the
air amounts to this. The mountains are quite
invisible. You come forth to see this great
blue presence lurking about the woods and the
horizon.
Jan. 15, 1838. After all that has been said
in praise of the Saxon race, we must allow that
our blue-eyed and fair-haired ancestors were
originally an ungodly and reckless crew.
Jan. 15, 1852. ... I do not know but the
poet is he who generates poems. By continence
he rises to creation on a higher level, a super
natural level. . . .
For the first time this winter I notice snow
fleas this afternoon in Walden wood. Wher-
180 WINTER.
ever I go, they are to be seen, especially in the
deepest ruts and foot-tracks. Their number is
almost infinite. It is a rather warm and moist
afternoon, and feels like rain. I suppose that
some peculiarity in the weather has called them
forth from the bark of the trees.
It is good to see Minott s hens pecking and
scratching the ground. What never-failing
health they suggest ! Even the sick hen is so
naturally sick, like a green leaf turning to
brown. No wonder men love to have hens about
them, and hear their creaking note. They are
even laying eggs from time to time still, the
undespairing race !
Jan. 15, 1853. . . . Mrs. Ripley told me this
p. M. that Russell had decided that that green
(and sometimes yellow) dust on the underside
of stones in walls was a decaying state of Lepra-
ria chlorina, a lichen ; the yellow another spe
cies of Lepraria. I have long known this dust,
but as I did not know the name of it, i. e., what
others called it, and therefore could not conven
iently speak of it, it has suggested less to me,
and I have made less use of it. I now first feel
as if I had got hold of it.
Jan. 15, 1857. ... As I passed the south shed
at the depot, observed what I thought at first a
tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere
roof open at the sides, under which several men
WINTER. 181
were at that time employed sawing wood with a
horse-power. Looking closer, I saw, to my sur
prise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having
the usual marks on its breast, and no bright
chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches
deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in
this shed where was much bare ground exposed
by removing the wood. When I advanced, in
stead of flying away, it concealed itself in the
wood, just as it often dodges behind a wall.
What is there in music that it should so stir
our deeps ? We are all ordinarily in a state of
desperation. Such is our life, it ofttimes drives
us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most,
life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the
fear of death or of dying, what a multitude
would immediately commit suicide. But let us
hear a strain of music, and we are at once ad
vertised of a life which no man had told us of,
which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to
describe faithfully the prospect which a strain
of music exhibits to me. The field of my life
becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread,
with no death nor disappointment at the end of
it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I
become adequate to my deed. No particulars
survive this expansion. Persons do not survive
it. In the light of this strain there is no thou
nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.
182 WINTER.
The tracks of the mice near the head of Well
Meadow were particularly interesting. There
was a level of pure snow there, unbroken by
bushes or grass, about four rods across, and
here were the tracks of mice running across it,
from the bushes on this side to those on the
other, the tracks quite near together, but re
peatedly crossing each other at very acute angles,
though each particular course was generally
quite direct. The snow was so light that only
one distinct track was made by all four of the
feet, . . . but the tail left a very distinct mark.
A single track stretching away almost straight,
sometimes half a dozen rods over the unspotted
snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new
pattern, and suggests an airy lightness in the
body that impressed it. Though there may
have been but one or two here, the tracks sug
gest quite a little company that had gone gad
ding over to their neighbors under the opposite
bush. Such is the delicacy of the impression
on the surface of the lightest snow, where other
creatures sink, and night, too, being the season
when these tracks are made, they remind me of a
fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors
were here. I can easily imagine all the rest.
Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves.
Yet I should like much to see, by broad day
light, a company of these revelers hopping
WINTER. 183
over the snow. There is a still life in America
that is little observed or dreamed of. ... How
snug they are somewhere under the snow now,
not to be thought of, if it were not for these
pretty tracks. For a week, or fortnight even, of
pretty still weather, the tracks will remain to tell
of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse. . . .
So it was so many thousands of years before
Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and
so it will be so many thousands of years after
his types are forgotten perchance. The deer-
mouse will be printing in the snow of Well
Meadow to be read by a new race of men.
Jan. 16, 1838. Man is like a cork which no
tempest can sink, but it will float securely to its
haven at last.
The world is never the less beautiful, though
viewed through a chink or knot-hole.
Jan. 16, 1852. I see that to some men their
relation to mankind is all important. It is fatal
in their eyes to outrage the opinions and cus
toms of their fellow-men. Failure and success
are therefore never proved by them by absolute
and universal tests. I feel myself not so vitally
related to my fellow-men. I impinge on them
but by a point on one side. It is not a Siamese-
twin ligature that binds me to them. It is un
safe to defer so much to mankind and the opin
ions of society, for these are always, and without
184 WINTER.
exception, heathenish and barbarous, seen from
the heights of philosophy. A wise man sees as
clearly the heathenism and barbarity of his own
countrymen as those of the nations to whom his
countrymen send missionaries. The English
man and American are subject equally to many
national superstitions with the Hindoos and
Chinese. My countrymen are to me foreigners.
I have but little more sympathy with them than
with the mob of India or of China. All nations
are remiss in their duties, and fall short of their
standards. Madame Pfeiffer says of the Par-
sees or Fire-worshipers in Bombay, who should
all have been on hand on the esplanade to greet
the first rays of the sun, that she found only a
few here and there, and some did not make
their appearance till nine o clock. I see no im
portant difference between the assumed gravity
and bought funeral sermon of the parish clergy
man and the howlings and strikings of the
breast of the hired mourning women of the
East.
Bill Wheeler had two clumps for feet, and
progressed slowly by short steps, having frozen
his feet once, as I understood. Him I have
been sure to meet once in five years, progressing
into the town on his stubs, holding the middle
of the road, as if he drove the invisible herd of
the world before him, especially on a military
WINTER. 185
day ; out of what confines, whose hired man
having been, in what remote barn having quar
tered all these years, I never knew. He seemed
to belong to a different caste from other men,
and reminded me both of the Indian pariah and
martyr. I understood that somebody was found
to give him his drink for the few chores he
could do. His meat was never referred to, he
had so sublimed his life. One day since this,
not long ago, I saw in my walk a kind of shelter,
such as woodmen might use, in the woods by the
Great Meadows, made of meadow hay cast over
a rude frame. Thrusting my head in at a hole,
as I am wont to do in such cases, I found Bill
Wheeler there curled up asleep on the hay, who,
being suddenly wakened from a sound sleep,
rubbed his eyes, and inquired if I found any
game, thinking I was sporting. I came away
reflecting much on that man s life, how he com
municated with none, how now, perchance, he
did chores for none, how he lived perhaps from
a deep principle, that he might be some mighty
philosopher, greater than Socrates or Diogenes,
simplifying life, returning to nature, having
turned his back on towns, how many things he
had put off, luxuries, comforts, human society,
even his feet, wrestling with his thoughts. I
felt even as Diogenes when he saw the boy drink
ing out of his hands, and threw away his cup.
186 WINTER.
Here was one who went alone, did no work, and
had no relatives that I knew of, was not ambitious
that I could see, did not depend on the good opin
ions of men. Must he not see things with an
impartial eye, disinterested, as the toad observes
the gardener. Perchance here is one of a sect
of philosophers, the only one, so simple, so ab
stracted in thought and life from his contempo
raries, that his wisdom is indeed foolishness to
them. Who knows but in his solitary meadow
hay bunk he indulges in thought only in trium
phant satires on men. Who knows but here is
a superiority to literature, etc., unexpressed and
inexpressible, one who has resolved to humble
and mortify himself as never man was humbled
and mortified, whose very vividness of percep
tion, clear knowledge, and insight have made
him dumb, leaving no common consciousness and
ground of parlance with his kind, or rather his
unlike kindred ! whose news plainly is not my
news nor yours. I was not sure for a moment
but here was a philosopher who had left far be
hind him the philosophers of Greece and India,
and I envied him his advantageous point of
view. I was not to be deceived by a few stupid
words, of course, and apparent besottedness. It
was his position and career that I contemplated.
C has a great respect for McKean, he
stands on so low a level; says he is great for
WINTER. 187
conversation. He never says anything, hardly
answers a question, but keeps at work, never
exaggerates, nor uses an exclamation, and does
as he agrees to. He appears to have got his
shoulder to the wheel of the universe. But the
other day he went greater lengths with me, as
he and Barry were sawing down a pine, both
kneeling of necessity. I said it was wet work
for the knees in the snow. He observed, looking
up at me, " We pray without ceasing."
But to return to Bill. I would have liked to
know what view he took of life. A month or
two after this, as I heard, he was found dead
among the brush over back of the hill, so far
decomposed that his coffin was carried to his
body, which was put into it with pitch-forks.
I have my misgivings still that he may have died
a Brahmin s death, dwelling at the roots of trees
at last, though I have since been assured that he
suffered from disappointed love (was what is
called love-cracked), than which can there be any
nobler suffering, any fairer death for a human
creature ? That this made him drink, froze his
feet, and did all the rest for him. Why have
not the world the benefit of his long trial?
Jan. 16, 1853. . . . Trench says that " Eivals,
in the primary sense of the word, are those who
dwell on the banks of the same stream," or " on
opposite banks," but (as he says in the case of
188 WINTER.
many words) since the use of water rights is a
fruitful source of contention between such neigh
bors, the word has acquired this secondary sense.
My friends are my rivals on the Concord in the
primitive sense of the word. There is no strife
between us respecting the use of the stream.
The Concord offers many privileges, but none
to quarrel about. It is a peaceful, not a brawl
ing stream. . . . Bailey, I find, has it, " Rival
[Rivalis L. . . . qui juxta eundem rivum pas-
cit]."
Jan. 16, 1859. P. M. To Walden, and thence
via Cassandra ponds to Fair Haven, and down
river. . . . As we go south west ward through the
Cassandra hollows toward the declining sun,
they look successively, both by their form and
color, like burnished silver shields in the midst
of which we walked, looking toward the sun.
The whole surface of the snow, the country over,
and of the ice, as yesterday, is rough, as if com
posed of hailstones half melted together. . . .
The snow which three quarters conceals the
Cassandra in these ponds, and every twig and
trunk and blade of withered sedge, is ... cased
with ice, and accordingly, as I have said, when
you go facing the sun, the hollows look like glitter
ing shields set round with brilliants. That bent
sedge in the midst of the shield, each particular
blade of it, being married to an icy wire, twenty
WINTER. 189
times its size at least, shines like polished silver
rings or semicircles. It must have been far
more splendid yesterday before any of the ice
fell off. No wonder my English companion
says that our scenery is more spirited than that
of England. The snow crust is rough with the
wrecks of brilliants under the trees, an inch or
two thick with them under many trees where
they last several days.
Jan. 16, 1860. ... I see a flock of tree
sparrows picking something from the surface of
the snow amid some bushes. Watching one
attentively, I find that it is feeding on the very
fine brown chaffy- looking seed of the panicled
andromeda. It understands how to get its din
ner, to make the plant give down, perfectly.
It flies up and alights on one of the dense
brown panicles of the hard berries, and gives it
a vigorous shaking and beating with its claws
and bill, sending down a shower of seed to the
snow beneath. It lies very distinct, though fine
almost as dust, on the spotless snow. It then
hops down and briskly picks up from the
snow what it wants. How very clean and agree
able to the imagination, and withal abundant, is
this kind of food ! How delicately they fare !
These dry persistent seed vessels hold their
crusts of bread until shaken. The snow is the
white table-cloth on which they fall. . . / It
190 WINTER.
shakes down a hundred times as much as it
wants, and shakes the same or another cluster
after each successive snow. How bountifully
nature feeds them. No wonder they come to
spend the winter with us, and are at ease with
regard to their food. . . . How neatly and sim
ply they feed ! This shrub grows unobserved
by most, only known to botanists, and at length
matures its hard, dry seed vessels, which, if no
ticed, are hardly supposed to contain seed ; but
there is no shrub or weed which is not known
to some bird. Though you may have never
noticed it, the tree sparrow comes from the
north in the winter straight to this shrub, and
confidently shakes its panicles, and then feasts
on the fine shower of seeds that falls from it.
Jan. 17, 1841. A true happiness never hap
pened, but rather is proof against all hope. I
would not be a happy, that is, a lucky man, but
rather a, necessitated and doomed one.
After so many years of study, I have not
learned my duty for one hour. I am stranded
at each reflux of the tide, and I, who sailed as
buoyantly on the middle deep as a ship, am as
helpless as a muscle on the rock. I cannot
account to myself for the hour I live. Here
time has given me a dull prosaic evening, not of
kin to vesper or Cynthia, a dead lapse, where
Time s stream seems settling into a pool, a still-
WINTER. 191
ness not as if Nature s breath were held, but
expired. Let me know that such hours as this
are the wealthiest in Time s gift. It is the in
sufficiency of the hour which, if we but feel and
understand, we shall reassert our independence
then.
Jan. 17, 1852. . . . The other day as I was
passing the house . . . with my pantaloons
as usual tucked into my boots (there was no
path beyond H s), I heard some persons
in s shed, but did not look round, and when
I had got a rod or two beyond, I heard some one
call out impudently from the shed, something
like, " Holloa, Mister, what do you think of the
walking ? " I turned round directly, and saw
three men standing in the shed. I was resolved
to discomfit them, that they should prove their
manhood, if they had any, and find something
to say, though they had nothing before, that
they should make amends to the universe by
feeling cheap. They should either say to my
face and eye what they had said to my back, or
they should feel the meanness of having to
change their tone. So I called out, looking at
one, " Do you wish to speak to me, sir ? " No
answer. So I stepped a little nearer and re
peated the question, when one replied, " Yes,
sir." So I advanced with alacrity up the path
they had shoveled. In the mean while one ran
192 WINTER.
into the house. I thought I had seen the near
est one. He called me by name faintly and
with hesitation, and held out his hand half un
consciously, which I did not decline. I inquired
gravely if he wished to say anything to me. He
could only wave to the other, and mutter, " My
brother." I approached him and repeated the
question. He looked as if he were shrinking
into a nutshell, a pitiable object he was, and
looked away from me while he began to frame
some business, some surveying that he might
wish to have done. I saw that he was drunk,
that his brother was ashamed of him, and I
turned my back on him in the outset of this
indirect and drunken apology. . . .
In proportion as I have celestial thoughts is
the necessity for me to be out and behold the
western sky before sunset these winter days.
That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that
knows neither winter nor summer. What is
your thought like ? That is the hue, that the
purity and transparency and distance from
earthly taint of my inmost mind ; for whatever
we see without is a symbol of something within,
and that which is farthest off is the symbol of
what is deepest within. The lover of contem
plation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky.
Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair
days.
WINTER. 193
Here, also, is the symbol of the triumph which
succeeds to a grief that has tried us to our ad
vantage, so that at last we can smile through our
tears. It is the aspect with which we come out
of the house of mourning. We have found our
relief in tears. As the skies appear to a man,
so is his mind. Some see only clouds there, some
prodigies and portents ; some scarce look up at
all, their heads, like those of the brutes, are
directed towards earth. Some behold there
serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world
run to see the panorama, while there is a pano
rama in the sky which few go out to see.
. . . There might be a chapter, when I speak
of hens in the thawy days and spring weather
on the chips, called Chickweed or Plantain.
Those western . . . vistas through clouds to
the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and
more elysian than when the whole sky is compar
atively free from clouds, for then there is wont
to be a vapor more generally diffused, especially
near the horizon, which in cloudy days is ab
sorbed, as it were, or collected into masses, and
the vistas are clearer than the unobstructed
cope of heaven.
What endless variety in the form and texture
of the clouds, some fine, some coarse-grained!
I saw to-night what looked like the back bone
with portions of the ribs of a fossil monster.
194 WINTER.
Every form and creature is thus shadowed forth
in vapor in the heavens. . . .
It appears to me that at a very early age the
mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his
body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual
power becomes something defined and limited.
He does not think expansively, as he was wont
to stretch himself in his growing days. What
was flexible sap hardens into heart wood, and
there is no further change. In -the season of
youth man seems to me capable of intellectual
effort and performance which surpass all rules
and bounds as the youth lays out his whole
strength without fear or prudence, and does not
feel his limits. It is the transition from poetry
to prose. The young man can run and leap,
he has not learned exactly how far. . . . The
grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He
has no strength to waste.
Jan. 17, 1853. . . . Cato, prescribing a med-
icamentum for oxen, says, " When you see a
snake s slough, take it and lay it up, that you
may not have to seek it when it is wanted."
This was mixed with bread, corn, etc.
He tells how to make bread and different
kinds of cakes, viz., a libum, a placenta, a spira
(so called because twisted like a rope, perhaps
like doughnuts), scriblita (because ornamented
with characters like writing), globi (globes),
WINTER. 195
etc. ; tells how to make vows for your oxeu with
an offering to Mars, and Sylvanus in a wood,
no woman to be present, or to know how it is
done.
... If you wish to remove an ill savor from
wine, he recommends to heat a brick, pitch it,
and let it down by a string to the bottom of the
cask, and let it remain there two days, the cask
being stopped. " If you wish to know if water
has been added to wine, make a little vessel of
ivy wood (materia ederaced). Put into it the wine
which you think has water in it. If it has water,
the wine will run out (efflue}\ the water will
remain, for a vessel of ivy wood does not hold
wine."
" Make a sacrificial feast for the oxen when
the pear is in blossom. Afterward begin to
plow in the spring." " That day is to be holy
(feriai) to the oxen, and herdsmen, and those
who make the feast." They offer wine and mut
ton to Jupiter Dap alls, also to Vesta if they
choose. . . .
When they thinned a consecrated grove (lu-
cum conlucare, as if to let in the light to a
shady place) they were to offer a hog by way of
expiation, and pray the god or goddess to whom
it was sacred to be propitious to them, their
house, and family, and children. Should not
every grove be regarded as a lucus or conse-
196 WINTER.
crated grove in this sense. I wish that our farm
ers felt some such awe when they cut down our
consecrated groves.
He gives several charms to cure diseases,
mere magician s words.
Jan. 17, 1860. . . . Alcott said well the
other day that this was his definition of heaven,
"A place where you can have a little conver
sation."
Jan. 18, 1841. We must expect no income
beside our outgoes. We must succeed now, and
we shall not fail hereafter. So soon as we be
gin to count the cost, the cost begins.
If/bur scheme is well built within, any mis-
h#p to the outbuilding will not be fatal.
/ The capital wanted is an entire independence
/ of all capital but a clear conscience and a reso
lute will,/
When we are so poor that the howling of the
wind shall have a music in it, and not declare
war against our property, the proprietors may
well envy us. We have been seeking riches
not by a true industry or building within, but
by mere accumulation, putting together what
was without till it rose a heap beside us. We
should rather acquire them by the utter renun
ciation of them. If I hold a house and land
as property, am I not disinherited of sun, wind,
rain, and all good beside? The richest are
WINTER. 197
only some degrees poorer than nature. It is
impossible to have more property than we dis
pense. Genius is only as rich as it is generous.
If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the
banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have,
leisure and a quiet mind.
Jan. 18, 1852. ... I still remember those
wonderful sparkles at Pelham Pond. The very
sportsmen in the distance with their dogs and
guns presented some surfaces on which a sparkle
could impinge, such was the transparent, flash
ing air. It was a most exhilarating, intoxicating
air, as when poets sing of the sparkling wine. . . .
What is like the peep or whistle of a bird in
the midst of a winter storm ?
The pines, some of them, seen through this
fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.
Jan. 18, 1856. . . . p. M. To Walden, to
learn the temperature of the water. . . . This is
a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and
bright. Yet I see the blue shadows on the snow
at Walden. The snow lies very level there,
about ten inches deep, and, for the most part,
bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think
I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow.
I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my
cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can pro
duce, with an amethystine hatchet in my hand.
I am in raptures with my own shadow. Our
198 WINTER.
very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial
blue. This has nothing to do with cold I think,
but the sun must not be too low.
I cleared a little space in the snow, which was
nine or ten inches deep, over the deepest part of
the pond, and cut through the ice, which was
about seven inches thick. . . . The moment I
reached the water, it gushed up and overflowed
the ice, driving me out of this yard in the snow,
where it stood at least two and one half inches
deep above the ice. The thermometer indicated
33^ at top, and 34f when drawn up rapidly
from thirty feet beneath ; so, apparently, it is
not much warmer beneath.
Jan. 18, 1859. That wonderful frostwork
of the 13th and 14th was too rare to be neg
lected, succeeded as it was also by two days
of glaze, but having company, I lost half the
advantage of it. ...
We did not have an opportunity to see how it
would look in the sun, but seen against the mist
or fog, it was too fair to be remembered. The
trees were the ghosts of trees appearing in their
winding sheets, an intenser white against the
comparatively dusky ground of the fog. I rode
to Acton in the afternoon of the 13th, and I
remember the wonderful avenue of these faery
trees which everywhere overarched my road.
The elms, from their form and size, were partio-
WINTER. 199
ularly beautiful. As far as I observed, the
frostwork was deepest in the low grounds,
especially on the Salix alba there. I learn
from the papers that this phenomenon prevailed
all over this part of the country, and attracted
the admiration of all. The trees on Boston Com
mon were clad in the same snow-white livery
with our Mnsketaquid trees. . . .
Every one, no doubt, has looked with delight,
holding his face low, at that beautiful frostwork
which so frequently in winter mornings is seen
bristling about the throat of every breathing
hole in the earth s surface. In this case, the
fog, the earth s breath made visible, was in such
abundance that it invested all our vales and
hills, and the frostwork, instead of being con
fined to the chinks and crannies of the earth,
covered the mightiest trees, so that we, walking
beneath them, had the same wonderful prospect
and environment that an insect would have . . .
making its way through a chink in the earth
which was bristling with hoar frost. That glaze !
I know what it was by my own experience ; it
was the frozen breath of the earth upon its
beard. . . .
Take the most rigid tree, the whole effect is
peculiarly soft and spirit-like, for there is no
marked edge or outline. How could you draw
the outline of these snowy fingers seen against
the fog, without exaggeration. . . .
200 WINTER.
Hardly could the New England farmer drive
to market under these trees without feeling
that his sense of beauty was addressed. ... A
farmer told me in all sincerity that, having occa
sion to go into Walden woods in his sleigh, he
thought he never saw anything so beautiful in all
his life, and if there had been men there who
knew how to write about it, it would have been
a great occasion for them. Many times I
thought that if the particular tree, commonly an
elm, under which I was walking or riding were
the only one like it in the country, it would be
worth a journey across the continent to see it.
Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys
would be undertaken on hearing a true account
of it. But instead of being confined to a single
tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as
the air itself. Every man s wood-lot was a mir
acle and surprise to him, and for those who
could not go far there were the trees in the
street and the weeds in the yard. . . . The
weeping willow with its thickened twigs seemed
more precise and regularly curved than ever,
and was as still as if carved from alabaster. . . .
It was remarkable that when the fog was a
little thinner, so that you could see the pine
woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct
dark blue. If any tree is set and stiff, it was
now more stiff ; if any airy and graceful, it was
WINTER. 201
now more graceful. The birches, especially, were
a great ornament.
Jan. 18, 1860. ... As I stood under Lee s
Cliff, several chickadees, uttering their faint
notes, came flitting near to me as usual. They are
busily prying under the bark of the pitch pines,
occasionally knocking off a piece, while they
cling with their claws on any side of the limb.
Of course they are in search of animal food, but
I see one suddenly dart down to a seedless pine-
seed wing on the snow, and then up again.
C says that he saw them busy about these
wings on the snow the other day, so I have no
doubt that they eat this seed.
The sky in the reflection at the open reach at
Hubbard s Bath is more green than in reality,
and also darker blue. The clouds are blacker,
and the purple more distinct.
Jan. 19, 1841. . . . Coleridge, speaking of
the love of God, says, " He that loves, may be
sure he was loved first." The love wherewith
we are loved is already declared, and afloat in
the atmosphere, and our love is only the inlet
to it. It is an inexhaustible harvest, always
ripe and ready for the sickle. It grows on
every bush, and let not those complain of their
fates who will not pluck it. We need make no
beggarly demand for it, but pay the price, and
depart. No transaction can be simpler. Love s
202 WINTER.
accounts are kept by single entry. When we
are amiable, then is love in the gale, and in sun
and shade, and day and night; and to sigh under
the cold, cold moon for a love unrequited is to
put a slight upon nature ; the natural remedy
would be to fall in love with the moon and the
night, and find our love requited.
I anticipate a more thorough sympathy with
nature when my thigh bones shall strew the
ground like the boughs which the wind has scat
tered. These troublesome humors will flower
into early anemones, and perhaps in the very
lachrymal sinus, nourished by its juices, some
young pine or oak will strike root.
What I call pain, when I speak in the spirit
of a partisan, and not as a citizen of the body,
would be serene being, if our interests were one.
Sickness is civil war. We have no external
foes. Even death will take place when I make
peace with my body, and set my seal to that
treaty which transcendent justice has so long re
quired. I shall at length join interest with it.
The mind never makes a great effort without
a corresponding energy of the body. When
great resolves are entertained, its nerves are not
relaxed, nor its limbs reclined.
Jan. 19, 1854. ... In Josselyn s account of
his voyage from London to Boston in 1638, he
says, " June, the first day in the afternoon, very
WINTER. 203
thick, foggie weather, we sailed by an enchanted
island," etc. This kind of remark, to be found
in so many accounts of voyages, appears to be a
fragment of tradition come down from the ear
liest account of Atlantis and its disappearance.
Varro, having enumerated certain writers on
agriculture, says accidentally that they wrote
" soluta ratione," i. e., in prose. This suggests
the difference between the looseness of prose
and the precision of poetry. A perfect expres
sion requires a particular rhythm or measure for
which no other can be substituted. The prosaic
is always a loose expression.
Jan. 19, 1856. Another bright winter day.
p. M. To river to get some water-asclepias, to see
what birds nests are made of. ...
As I came home through the village at 8.15
P.M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full
and not more than 18 from the zenith, the wind
N. W. but not strong, and the air pretty cold,
I saw the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds
on a larger scale and more distinct than ever
before. There were eight or ten courses of
clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of
blue sky they occupied the whole width of
the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus, in per
fectly regular curves from W. to E. across the
whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying
the greater part of the visible cope, were par-
204 WINTER.
ticularly distinct. They were all as regularly
arranged as the lines on a melon, arid with much
straighter sides, as if cut with a knife. I hear
that it attracted the attention of those who were
abroad at 7 P. M., and now at 9 p. M. it is scarcely
less remarkable. On one side of the heavens,
N. or S., the intervals of blue look almost black
by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind
from the N. W. Why do these bars extend
east and west ? Is it the influence of the sun
which set so long ago ? or of the rotation of the
earth ? The bars which I notice so often morn
ing and evening are apparently connected with
the sun at those periods.
Jan. 20, 1841. Disappointment will make us
conversant with the nobler part of our nature.
It will chasten us and prepare us to meet acci
dent on higher ground the next time. As Han
nibal taught the Romans the art of war, so is
all misfortune only a stepping-stone to fortune.
The desultory moments which are the grimmest
feature of misfortune are a step before me on
which I should set foot, and not stumbling-
blocks in the path. To extract its whole good,
I must be disappointed with the best fortune,
and not be bribed by sunshine or health.
O Happiness, what is the stuff thou art
made of ? Is it not gossamer and floating
spider s webs ? a crumpled sunbeam a coiled
WINTER. 205
dew-line settling on some flower? What mo
ments will not supply the reel from which thou
mayst be wound off ? Thou art as subtle as
the pollen of flowers and the sporules of the
fungi.
When I meet a person unlike me, I find my
self wholly in the unlikeness. In what I am
unlike others, in that I am.
When we ask for society, we do not want the
double of ourselves, but the complement rather.
Society should be additive and helpful. We
would be reinforced by its alliance. True friends
will know how to use each other in this respect,
and never barter or exchange their common
wealth, just as barter is unknown in families.
They will not dabble in the general coffers, but
each will put his finger into the private coffer of
the other. They will be most familiar, they will
be most unfamiliar, for they will be so one and
single that common themes and things will have
to be bandied between them, but in silence they
will digest them as one mind ; they will at the
same time be so true and double that each will
be to the other as admirable and as inaccessible
as a star. When my friend comes, I view his
orb " through optic glass " " at evening from
the top of Fesole." After the longest earthly
period, he will still be in apogee to me. But
we should so meet ourselves as we meet our
206 WINTER.
friends, and still ever seek for ourselves in that
which is above us and unlike us. So only shall
we see what has been well called the light of our
own countenances.
Jan. 20, 1853. . . . Ah, our indescribable win
ter sky, between emerald (?) and amber (?), such
as summer never sees. What more beautiful or
soothing to the eye than those finely divided . . .
clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton batting,
now reaching up from the west above my head !
Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends
are curved like spray or wisps. All kinds of
figures are drawn on the blue ground with this
fibrous white paint.
Jan. 20, 1855. ... In certain places, stand
ing on their snowiest side, the woods were incred
ibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the young
pines reminded you of the purest statuary, and
the stately, full-grown ones, towering around,
affected you as if you stood in a Titanic sculp
tor s studio, so purely and delicately white, trans
mitting the light, their dark trunks all concealed ;
and in many places where the snow lay on with
ered oak leaves between you and the light, va
rious delicate, fawn-colored tints blending with
the white enhanced the beauty.
. . . How new all things seem! Here is a
broad, shallow pool in the fields which yesterday
was slush, now converted into a soft, white,
WINTER. 207
fleecy snow ice. ... It is like the beginning of the
world. There is nothing hackneyed where a new
snow can come and cover all the landscape. . . .
The world is not only new to the eye, but is still
as at creation. Every blade and leaf is hushed,
not a bird or insect is heard, only, perchance, a
faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. . . . The
snow still adheres conspicuously to the N. W.
sides of the stems of the trees, quite up to their
summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that
direction. ... It would be about as good as
a compass to steer by in a cloudy day or by
night. . . .
We come upon the tracks of a man and dog,
which I guessed to be C. s. Further still, . . .
as I was showing to T. under a bank the single
flesh-colored or pink apothecium of a Beomyces
which was not covered by the snow, I saw the
print of C. s foot by its side, and knew that his
eyes had rested on it that afternoon. It was
about the size of a pin s head. Saw also where
he had examined the lichens on the rails. . . .
Very musical and sweet now, like a horn, is
the hounding of a fox-hound heard in some dis
tant wood, while I stand listening in some far
solitary and silent field.
I doubt if I can convey an idea of the appear
ance of the woods yesterday. As you stood in
their midst, and looked round on their boughs
208 WINTER.
and twigs laden with snow, it seemed as if there
could be none left to reach the ground. These
countless zigzag white arms crossing each other
at every possible angle completely closed up the
view like a light drift within three or four rods
on every side, the wintriest prospect imaginable.
That snow which sifted down into the wood
paths was much drier and lighter than else
where.
Jan. 20, 1856. In my experience I have
found nothing so truly impoverishing as what is
called wealth, i. e., the command of greater
means than you had before possessed, however
few and slight still, for you thus inevitably ac
quire a more expensive habit of living, and even
the very same necessaries and comforts cost you
more than they once did. Instead of gaining,
you have lost some independence, and if your
income should be suddenly lessened, you would
find yourself poor, though possessed of the same
means which once made you rich. Within the
last five years I have had the command of a lit
tle more money than in the previous five years,
for I have sold some books and some lectures,
yet I have not been a whit better fed or clothed
or warmed or sheltered, not a whit richer, except
that I have been less concerned about my living ;
but perhaps my life has been the less serious
for it, and to balance it, I feel now that there is
WINTER. 209
a possibility of failure. Who knows but I may
come upon the town, if, as is likely, the pub
lic want no more of my books or lectures, as,
with regard to the last, is already the case. Be
fore, I was much likelier to take the town upon
my shoulders. That is, I have lost some of my
independence on them, when they would say that
I had gained an independence. If you wish to
give a man a sense of poverty, give him a thou
sand dollars. The next hundred dollars he gets
will not be worth more than ten that he used to
get. Have pity on him. Withhold your gift.
p. M. Up river. ... It is now good walking
on the river, for though there has been no thaw
since the snow came, a great part of it has been
converted into snow-ice by sinking the old ice
beneath the water. The crust of the rest is
stronger than in the fields, because the snow is
so shallow and has been so moist. The river
is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in
summer, and when the ice is bare in winter, but
even when the snow lies very deep m the fields.
It is invaluable to the walker, being now, not
only the most interesting, but, excepting the
narrow and unpleasant track in the highway,
the only practicable route. The snow never lies
so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks
the ice and is soon converted into snow-ice to a
great extent, beside being blown out of the river
210 WINTER.
valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where
you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better
walking than elsewhere in the winter. But what
a different aspect has the river s brim from what
it wears in summer ! I do not at this moment
hear an insect s hum, nor see a bird or a flower.
That museum of animal and vegetable life, a
meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of
white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of
shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it.
Jan. 20, 1857. ... I hear that Boston har
bor froze over on the 18th down to Fort Inde
pendence.
The river has been frozen everywhere except
at the very few swiftest places since about De
cember 18th, and everywhere since about January
1st.
At R. W. E. s this evening at about 6 P. M.,
I was called out to see E. s cave in the snow. It
was a hole about two and a half feet wide and
six feet long into a drift, a little winding, and
he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I
observed as I approached in a course at right
angles with the length of the cave, that its mouth
was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I
did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of
this lamp was remarkably reflected and distrib
uted. The snowy walls were one universal re
flector with countless facets. I think that one
WINTER. 211
lamp would light sufficiently a hall built of this
material. The snow about the mouth of the
cave within had the yellow color of the flame to
me approaching, as if the lamp were close to it.
We afterward buried the lamp in a little crypt
in this snow-drift, and walled it in, and found
that its light was visible even in this twilight
through fifteen inches thickness of snow. The
snow was all aglow with it. If it had been
darker, probably it would have been visible
through a much greater thickness. But what
was most surprising to me, when E. crawled into
the extremity of his cave, and shouted at the top
of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if
he were a quarter of a mile off. At first I could
not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us
crawled in by turns, and though our heads were
only six feet from those outside, our loudest
shouting only amused and surprised them. Ap
parently the porous snow drank up all the sound.
The voice was in fact muffled by the surround
ing snow walls, and I saw that we might lie in
that hole screaming for assistance in vain while
travelers were passing along twenty feet distant.
It had the effect of ventriloquism. So you need
only make a snow house in your yard and pass
an hour in it, to realize a good deal of Esqui
maux life.
Jan. 20, 1859. . . . Among four or five pick-
212 WINTER.
erel in a " well " on the river, I see one with
distinct transverse bars, as I look down on its
back, not quite across the back, but plain as
they spring from the side of the back, while all
the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the
former Esox fasciatus ? . . .
The green of the ice and water begins to be
visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it
produced by the reflected blue of the sky min
gling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun ?
Jan. 21, 1838. Man is the artificer of his own
happiness. Let him beware how he complains
of the disposition of circumstances, for it is his
own disposition he blames. If this is sour, or
that rough, or the other steep, let him think if
it be not his work. If his look curdles all
hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception ;
if he hobble in his gait, let him not grumble at
the roughness of the way ; if he is weak in the
knees, let him not call the hill steep. This was
the pith of the inscription on the wall of the
Swedish inn, " You will find at Trolhate excel
lent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring
them with you ! "
Every leaf and twig was this morning cov
ered with a sparkling ice armor. Even the
grasses in exposed fields were hung with innu
merable diamond pendants which jingled mer
rily when brushed by the foot of the traveler.
WINTER. 213
... It was as if some superincumbent stratum
of the earth had been removed in the night,
exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals.
The scene changed at every step, or as the head
was inclined to the right or to the left. There
were the opal, and sapphire, and emerald, and
jasper, and beryl, and topaz, and ruby.
Such is beauty ever, neither here nor there,
now nor then, neither in Home nor in Athens,
but wherever there is a soul to admire. If I
seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at
home, my search will be a fruitless one.
Jan. ,21, 1841. We can render men the best
assistance by letting them see how rare a thing
it is to need any assistance. I am not in haste
to help men more than God is. If they will not
help themselves, shall I become their abettor ?
If I have unintentionally injured the feelings
of any, or profaned their sacred character, we
shall be necessitated to know each other better
than before. I have gained a glorious vantage-
ground then, and to the other the shaft which
carried the wound will bear its own remedy with
it, for we cannot be profaned without the con
sciousness that we have a holy fane for our asy
lum somewhere. Would that sincere words
might always drive men thus to earth them
selves !
Jan. 21, 1852. ... To record truths which
214 WINTER.
have the same relation and value to the next
world, i. e., the world of thought and of the soul,
that political news have to this. . . .
Heard lecture to-night. . . . Why did
I not like it better ? Can I deny that it was
good? Perhaps I am bound to account to my
self at least for any lurking dislike for what
others admire, and I am not prepared to find
fault with. Well, I did not like it then because
it did not make me like it, it did not carry
me away captive. The lecturer was not simple
enough. For the most part, the manner over
bore, choked off, stifled, put out of sight the
matter. I was inclined to forget that he was
speaking, conveying ideas, thought there had
been an intermission. Never endeavor to sup
ply the tone which you think proper for certain
sentences. It is as if a man whose mind was at
ease should supply the tones and gestures for a
man in distress who found only the words. One
makes a speech and another behind him makes
the gestures. Then he reminded me of Emer
son, and I could not afford to be reminded of
Christ himself. Yet who can deny that it was
good ? But it was that intelligence, that way
of viewing things (combined with much pecul
iar talent), which is the common property of
this generation. A man does best when he is
most himself.
WINTER. 215
I never realized so distinctly as at this mo
ment that I am peacefully parting company with
the best friend I ever had, from the fact that
each is pursuing his proper path. I perceive
that it is possible we may have a better under
standing now than when we were more at one,
not expecting such essential agreement as before.
Simply our paths diverge.
Jan. 21, 1853. A fine, still, warm moonlight
evening. . . . Moon not yet full. To the woods
by the Deep Cut at nine o clock. The blueness
of the sky at night is an everlasting surprise to
me, suggesting the constant presence and preva
lence of light in the firmament, the color it wears
by day, that we see through the veil of night to
the constant blue. The night is not black when
the air is clear, but blue still, as by day. The
great ocean of light and ether is unaffected by
our partial night. . . . At midnight I see into
the universal day.
I am somewhat oppressed and saddened by
the sameness and apparent poverty of the heav
ens, that these irregular and few geometrical
figures which the constellations make are no
other than those seen by the Chaldean shep
herds. I pine for a new world in the heavens
as well as on the earth, and though it is some
consolation to hear of the wilderness of stars
and systems invisible to the naked eye, yet the
216 WINTER.
sky does not make that impression of variety
and wildness that even the forest does, as it
ought to do. It makes an impression rather of
simplicity and unchangeableness, as of eternal
laws. ... I seem to see it pierced with visual
rays from a thousand observatories. It is more
the domain of science than of poetry. It is
the stars as not known to science that I would
know, the stars which the lonely traveler
knows. The Chaldaean shepherds saw not the
same stars which I see, and if I am elevated in
the least toward the heavens, I do not accept
their classification of them. I am not to be dis
tracted by the names which they have imposed.
The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the
evening 1 star Venus. The heaven should be as
new, at least, as the world is new. The clas
sification of the stars is old and musty. It is as
if a mildew had taken place in the heavens,
as if the stars, so closely packed, had heated
and moulded there. If they appear fixed, it is
because men have been thus necessitated to see
them. ... A few good anecdotes is our science,
with a few imposing statements respecting dis
tance and size, and little or nothing about the
stars as they concern man. It teaches how he
may survey a country or sail a ship, and not
how he may steer his life. Astrology contained
the germ of a higher truth than this. It may
WINTER. 217
happen that the stars are more significant and
truly celestial to the teamster than to the astron
omer. . . . Children study astronomy at the
district school, and learn that the sun is ninety-
five millions of miles distant and the like, a
statement which never made any impression on
me, because I never walked it, and which I can
not be said to believe. But the sun shines nev
ertheless. Though observatories are multiplied,
the heavens receive very little attention. The
naked eye may easily see farther than the
armed. It depends on who looks through it.
Man s eye is the true star-finder, the comet-
seeker. No superior telescope to this has been
invented. In those big ones, the recoil is equal
to the force of the discharge. " The poet s eye
in a fine frenzy rolling " ranges from earth to
heaven, which the astronomer s eye not often
does. It does not see far beyond the dome of
the observatory. . . .
As I walk the railroad causeway, I am dis
turbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen
ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night.
I cannot walk with my ears covered, for the
silence is something positive and to be heard. I
must stand still and listen with open ear, far
from the noises of the village, that the night
may make its impression on me, a fertile and
eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is
218 WINTER.
merely negative, an arid and barren waste in
which I shudder, where no ambrosia grows. I
must hear the whispering of a myriad voices.
Silence alone is worthy to be heard. It is of
various depths and fertility like soil. Now it
is a mere Sahara where men perish of hunger
and thirst, now a fertile bottom and prairie of
the West. As I leave the village, drawing
nearer to the woods, I listen from time to
time to hear the hounds of silence baying the
moon, to know if they are on the track of any
game. If there is no Diana in the night, what
is it worth? . . . The silence sings. It is mu
sical. I remember a night when it was audible.
I heard the unspeakable. . . .
If night is the mere negation of day, I hear
nothing but my own steps in it. Death is with
me, and life far away. If the elements are not
human, if the winds do not sing or sigh, as the
stars twinkle, my life runs shallow. I measure
the depth of my own being. . . .
When I enter the woods, I am fed by the
variety, the forms of the trees above against the
blue, with the stars seen through the pines, like
the lamps hung on them in an illumination, the
somewhat indistinct and misty fineness of the
pine tops, the finely divided spray of the oaks,
etc., and the shadow of all these on the snow.
The first shadow I came to, I thought was a black
WINTER. 219
place where the woodchoppers had had a fire.
These myriad shadows checker the white ground
and enhance the brightness of the enlightened
portions. See the shadows of these young oaks
which have lost half their leaves, more beau
tiful than the trees themselves, like the shadow
of a chandelier, and motionless as fallen leaves
on the snow ; but shake the tree, and all is in
motion.
In this stillness and at this distance I hear
the nine o clock bell in Bedford, five miles off,
which I might never hear in the village ; but
here its music surmounts the village din and
has something very sweet and noble and in
spiring in it, associated in fact with the hooting
of owls.
Returning, I thought I heard the creaking of
a wagon, just starting from Hubbard s door, and
rarely musical it sounded. It was the Telegraph
harp. It began to sound at one spot only. It
is very fitful, and only sounds when it is in the
mood. You may go by twenty times both when
the wind is high and when it is low, and let it blow
which way it will, and yet hear no strain from it.
But at another time, at a particular spot, you
may hear a strain rising and swelling on the
string, which may at last ripen to something
glorious. The wire will perhaps labor long with
it before it attains to melody.
220 WINTER.
Even the creaking of a wagon in a frosty
night has music in it which allies it to the highest
and purest strains of the muse. . . .
Minott says his mother told him she had seen
a deer come down the hill behind her house,
where J. Moore s now is, and cross the road and
the meadow in front. Thinks it may have been
eighty years ago.
Jan. 21, 1857. ... It is remarkable how
many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the
village, where they have been in the night, and
yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener
than once in eight or ten years. . . .
As I flounder along the Corner road against
the root fence, a very large flock of snow bun
tings alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds
rising above the snow ... a hundred or two of
them. They run restlessly amid the weeds, so
that I can hardly get sight of them through my
glass. Then suddenly all arise and fly only two
or three rods, alighting within three rods of me.
They keep up a constant twittering. It is as if
they were ready any instant for a longer flight,
but their leader had not so ordered it. Sud
denly away they sweep again, and I see them
alight in a distant field where the weeds rise
above the snow, but in a few minutes they have
left that also, and gone farther north. Beside
their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter,
WINTER. 221
and from the loiterers you have a quite tender
peep, as they fly after the vanishing flock.
What independent creatures ! They go seeking
their food from north to south. If New Hamp
shire and Maine are covered deeply with snow,
they scale down to Massachusetts for their
breakfast. Not liking the grains in this field,
away they dash to another distant one, attracted
by the weeds rising above the snow. Who can
guess in what field, by what river or mountain,
they breakfasted this morning. They did not
seem to regard me so near, but as they went off,
their wave actually broke over me as a rock.
They have the pleasure of society at their feasts,
a hundred dining at once, busily talking while
eating, remembering what occurred in Grinnell
Land. As they flew past me, they presented a
pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of
white alternating with bars of black.
Jan. 22, 1852. Having occasion to get up
and light a lamp in the middle of a sultry night,
perhaps to exterminate mosquitoes, I observed a
stream of large black ants passing up and down
one of the bare corner posts, those descending
having their large white eggs or Iarva3 in their
mouths, the others making haste up for another
load. I supposed that they had found the heat
so great just under the roof as to compel them
to remove their progeny to a cooler place.
222 WINTER.
They had evidently taken and communicated the
resolution to improve the coolness of the night
to remove their young to a cooler and safer
locality, one stream running up, and another
down, with great industry.
But why did I change ? Why did I leave the
woods ? I do not think that I can tell. I have
often wished myself back. I do not know any
better how I came to go there. Perhaps it is
none of my business, even if it is yours. Per
haps I wanted change. There was a little stag
nation, it may be, about two o clock in the after
noon. The world s axle creaked, as if it wanted
greasing, as if the oxen labored with the wain,
and could hardly get their load over the ridge of
the day. Perhaps if I lived there much longer,
1 might live there forever. One would think
twice before he accepted heaven on such terms.
A ticket to heaven must include a ticket to
Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell. Your ticket to
the Boxes admits you to the Pit also.
How much botany is indebted to the Ara
bians. A great part^of our common names of
plants appear to be Arabic. . . .
The pleasures of the intellect are permanent,
the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
My friend invites me to read my papers to him.
Gladly would I read, if he would hear. He
must not hear coarsely, but finely, suffering not
WINTER. 223
the least to pass through the sieve of hearing.
To associate with one for years with joy who
never met you thought with thought ! An over
flowing sympathy, while yet there is no intellect
ual communion. Could we not meet on higher
ground with the same heartiness? It is dull
work reading to one who does not apprehend
you. How can it go on ? I will still abide by
the truth in my converse and intercourse with
my friends, whether I am so brought nearer to
or removed farther from them. I shall not be
less your friend for answering you truly, though
coldly. Even the estrangement of friends is
a fact to be serenely contemplated, as in the
course of Nature. It is of no use to lie either
by word or action. Is not the everlasting truth
agreeable to you?
To set down such choice experiences that my
own writings may inspire me, and at last I may
make wholes of parts. Certainly it is a distinct
profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix
the sentiments and thoughts which visit all men
more or less generally. That the contemplation
of the unfinished picture may suggest its har
monious completion. Associate reverently and
as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts.
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is
a nest-egg by the side of which more will be
laid. . . . Perhaps this is the main value of a
224 WINTER.
habit of writing, of keeping a journal, that so
we remember our best hours, and stimulate our
selves. My thoughts are my company. They
have a certain individuality and separate exist
ence, age, personality. Having by chance re
corded a few disconnected thoughts, and then
brought them into juxta position, they suggest a
whole new field in which it was possible to labor
and think. Thought begat thought. . . .
When a man asks me a question, I look him
in the face. If I do not see any inquiry there,
I cannot answer it. A man asked me about the
coldness of this winter compared with others,
last night. I looked at him. His face expressed
no more curiosity or relationship to me than a
custard pudding. I made him a random an
swer. I put him off till he was in earnest. He
wanted to make conversation. . . .
That in the preaching or mission of the Jes
uits in Canada which converted the Indians was
their sincerity. They could not be suspected of
sinister motives. The savages were not poor
observers or reasoners. The priests were there
fore sure of success, for they had paid the price
of it.
We resist no true invitations. They are irre
sistible. When my friend asks me to stay, and
I do not, unless I have another engagement, it
is because I do not find myself invited. It is
WINTER. 225
not in his will to invite me. We should deal
with the real mood of our friends. I visited
my friend constantly for many years, and he
postponed our friendship to trivial engagements,
so that I saw him not at all. When in after
years he had leisure to meet me, I did not find
myself invited to go to him.
Jan. 22, 1854. . . . Once or twice of late I
have seen the mother-of-pearl tints and rainbow
flecks in the western sky. The usual time is
when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an
hour before sunset. Yesterday I saw a very
permanent specimen, like a long knife handle of
mother-of-pearl, very pale, with an interior blue,
and rosaceous tinges. I think the summer sky
never exhibits this so finely.
No second snow-storm in the winter can be so
fair and interesting as the first.
Jan. 22, 1855. Heavy rain in the night and
half of to-day, with very high wind from the
southward washing off the snow, and filling the
road with water. ... It is very exciting to see
where was so lately only ice and snow dark,
wavy lakes dashing in furious torrents through
the commonly dry channels under the cause
ways, to hear only the rush and roar of waters,
and look down on mad billows where in summer
are commonly only dry pebbles. . . . The musk-
rats driven out of their holes by the water are
226 WINTER.
exceedingly numerous. Yet many of their
cabins are above water on the S. branch. Here
there are none. We saw fifteen or twenty of
these creatures at least between Derby s bridge
and the Tarbel spring, either swimming with
surprising swiftness up or down or across the
stream, to avoid us, or sitting at the water s
edge, or resting on the edge of the ice, or on
some alder bough just on the surface. One re
freshed himself after his cold swim regardless of
us, probed his fur with his nose, and scratched
his ear like a dog. They frequently swam to
ward an apple-tree in the midst of the water,
in the vain hope of finding a resting place and
refuge there. I saw one looking quite a red
dish brown, busily feeding on some plant just at
the water s edge, thrusting his head under for it.
But I hear the sound of G s gun up stream,
and see his bag stuffed out with their dead
bodies.
Jan. 22, 1857. ... I asked Minott a,bout the
cold Friday. He said " it was plaguey cold. It
stung like a wasp." He remembers seeing them
toss up water in a shoemaker s shop, usually a
very warm place, and when it struck the floor
it was frozen, and rattled like so many shot.
Jan. 22, 1859. . . . The muskrat hunter last
night with his increased supply of powder and
shot, and boat turned up somewhere on the
WINTER. 227
bank, now that the river is rapidly rising,
dreaming of his exploits to-day in shooting
muskrats, of the great pile of dead rats that
will weigh down his boat before night when he
will return wet and weary and weather-beaten
to his hut with an appetite for his supper, and
for much sluggish . . . social intercourse with
his fellows, even he, dark, dull, much battered
flint as he is, is an inspired man to his extent
now, perhaps the most inspired by this freshet
of any, and the Musketaquid meadows cannot
spare him. There are poets of all kinds and
degrees, little known to each other. The Lake
School is not the only or the principal one.
They love various things ; some love beauty and
some love rum. Some go to Rome, and some
go a-fishing, and are sent to the house of correc
tion once a month. They keep up their fires by
means unknown to me. I know not their com
ings and goings. How can I tell what violets
they watch for ? I know them wild, and ready
to risk all when their muse invites. The most
sluggish will be up early enough then, and face
any amount of wet and cold. I meet these
gods of the river and woods with sparkling
faces (like Apollo s), late from the house of
correction, it may be, carrying whatever mystic
and forbidden bottles or other vessels concealed,
while the dull, regular priests are steering their
228 WINTER.
parish rafts in a prose mood. What care I
to see galleries full of representations of heathen
gods, when I can see actual living ones, by an
infinitely superior artist. ... If you read the
Rig Veda, oldest of books, as it were, describing
a very primitive people and condition of things,
you hear in their prayers of a still older, more
primitive and aboriginal race in their midst and
roundabout, warring on them, arid seizing their
flocks and herds, infesting their pastures. Thus
is it in another sense in all communities, and
hence the prisons and police. I hear these guns
going to-day, and I must confess they are to me
a springlike and exhilarating sound, like the
cock-crowing, though each one may report the
death of a muskrat. This, methinks, or the
like of this, with whatever mixture of dross, is
the real morning or evening hymn that goes up
from these vales to-day, and which the stars
echo. This is the best sort of glorifying God
and enjoying Him that at all prevails here to-day.
... As a mother loves to see her children take
nourishment and expand, so God loves to see
his children thrive on the nutriment He has fur
nished them. . . . These aboriginal men cannot
be repressed, but under some guise or other they
survive and reappear continually. Just as sim
ply as the crow picks up the worms which are
over the fields, having been washed out by the
WINTER. 229
thaw, these men pick up the muskrats that have
been washed out of the banks. And to some
such ends men plow and sail, and powder and
shot are made, and the grocer exists to retail
them, though he may think himself much more
the deacon of some church.
Jan. 22, 1860. Up river to Fair Haven
Pond. . . . Where the sedge grows rankly and
is uncut, as along the edge of the river and
meadows, what fine coverts are made for mice,
etc., at this season. It is arched over, and the
snow rests chiefly on its ends, while the middle
part is elevated from six inches to a foot, and
forms a thick thatch, as it were, even when all
is covered with snow, under which the mice, etc.,
can run freely, out of the way of the wind and
of foxes. After a pretty deep snow has just
partially melted, you are surprised to find, as
you walk through such a meadow, how high and
lightly the sedge lies up, as if there had been
no pressure upon it. It grows, perhaps, in
dense tufts or tussocks, and when it falls over,
it forms a thickly thatched roof.
Nature provides shelter for her creatures in
various ways. If the muskrat has no longer
extensive fields of weeds and grass to crawl in,
what an extensive range it has under the ice of
the meadows and river sides; for the water
settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of
230 WINTER.
indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it
passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out
of the wind, and invisible to men.
Jan. 23, 1841. A day is lapsing. I hear
cockerels crowing in the yard, and see them
stalking among the chips in the sun. I hear busy
feet on the floors, and the whole house jars with
industry. Surely the day is well spent, and the
time is full to overflowing. Mankind is as busy
as the flowers in summer, which make haste to
unfold themselves in the forenoon, and close
their petals in the afternoon. The momentous
topics of human life are always of secondary
importance to the business in hand, just as car
penters discuss politics between the strokes of
the hammer, while they are shingling a roof.
The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary
as the music of the spheres. The solidity and
apparent necessity of this routine insensibly
recommend it to me. It is like a cane or a
cushion for the infirm, and in view of it all are
infirm. If there were but one erect and solid-
standing tree in the woods, all creatures would
go to rub themselves against it, and make sure
of their footing. Eoutine is a ground to stand
on, a wall to retreat to. We cannot draw on
our boots without bracing ourselves against it.
Our health requires that we should recline on it
from time to time. When we are in it, the
WINTER. 231
hand stands still on the face of the clock, and
we grow like corn in the genial darkness and
silence of the night. Our weakness wants it,
but our strength uses it. Good for the body
is the work of the body, and good for the soul,
the work of the soul, and good for either, the
work of the other. Let them not call hard
names, nor know a divided interest.
When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses
of nature, I am reminded by the serene and
retired spirit in which it requires to be contem
plated of the inexpressible privacy of a life.
How silent and unambitious it is ! The beauty
there is in mosses will have to be considered
from the holiest, quietest nook. The gods
delight in stillness. . . . My truest, serenest
moments are too still for emotion. They have
woolen feet. In all our lives, we live under the
hill, and if we are not gone, we live there still.
Jan. 23, 1852. . . . Deep Cut going to Fair
Haven Hill. No music from the telegraph harp
on the causeway where the wind is strong, but
in the Cut this cold day I hear memorable strains.
What must the birds and beasts think where
it passes through woods, who heard only the
squeaking of the trees before ? I should think
that these strains would get into their music at
last. Will not the mocking-bird be heard one
day inserting this strain in his medley ? It in-
232 WINTER.
toxicates me. Orpheus is still alive. All poetry
and mythology revive. The spirits of all bards
sweep the strings. I hear the clearest silver
lyre-like tones, Tyrtaean tones. ... It is the
most glorious music I ever heard. All those
bards revive and flourish again in those five min
utes in the Deep Cut. The breeze came through
an oak still waving its dry leaves. The very
fine, clear tones seemed to come from the very
core and pith of the telegraph pole. I know
not but it is my own chords that tremble so
divinely. There are barytones and high, sharp
tones, and some come sweeping * seemingly from
farther along the wire. The latent music of
the earth had found here a vent, music ^Eolian.
There were two strings in fact, one each side.
. . . Thus, as ever, the finest uses of things are
the accidental. Mr. Morse did not invent this
music. . . .
There are some whose ears help me so that
my things have a rare significance when I read
to them. It is almost too good a hearing, so
that, for the time, I regard my own writing
bom too favorable a point of view.
Jan. 23, 1854. Love tends to purify and
sublime itself. It mortifies and triumphs over
the flesh, and the bond of its union is holiness..
The increased length of the days is
observable of late. What is a winter unless
WINTER. 233
you have risen and gone abroad frequently
before sunrise and by starlight. Varro speaks
of what he calls, I believe, before-light (antelu-
cana) occupations in winter, 011 the farm. Such
is especially milking in this neighborhood.
Speaking of the rustic villa, he says, You must
see that the kitchen is convenient, " because some
things are to be done there in the winter before
daylight (antelucanis temporibus), food is to be
prepared and taken." In the study, are not
some things to be done before daylight, and a
certain food to be prepared there ?
Jan. 23, 1857. The coldest day that I re
member recording, clear and bright, but very
high wind, blowing the snow. Ink froze ; had
to break the ice in my pail with a hammer.
Thermometer at 6| A. M., 18, at 10, 14,
at 12|, 9, at 4 p. M., 5^; at 7 P. M., 8.
I may safely say that 5 has been the highest
temperature to-day by our thermometer. Walk
ing this P. M., I notice that the face inclines to
stiffen. . . . On first coming out in very cold
weather, I find that I breathe fast, though with
out walking faster or exerting myself more than
usual.
Jan. 24, 1857. About 6J A. M. [mercury (?)]
in the bulb of thermometer, Smith s on the same
nail, 30. At 9 A. M., ours 18, Smith s
22, which indicates that ours would have
234 WINTER.
stood at 26 at 6 A. M., if the thermometer had
been long enough. At 11^ A. M., ours was 1,
at 4 P. M., +12.
Jan. 25, 1857. Still another very cold morn
ing. Smith s thermometer over ours, at 29,
[mercury ?] in bulb of ours. But about 7 ours
was 18, and Smith s at 24. Ours, therefore,
at first, about 23.
Jan. 26, 1857. Another cold morning. None
looked early, but about 8, it was 14. Saw Bos
ton Harbor frozen over, as it had been for some
time. It reminded me of, I think, Parry s Win
ter Harbor, with vessels frozen in. Saw thou
sands on the ice, a stream of men where they
were cutting a channel toward the city. Ice said
to reach fourteen miles. Snow untracked on
many decks.
Ice did not finally go out till about February
15th.
Jan. 23, 1858. The wonderfully mild and
pleasant weather continues. The ground has
been bare since the llth. This morning was
colder than before. I have not been able to
walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along
the channel of the South Branch at any time.
P. M. To Saw Mill Brook. A fine afternoon.
There has been but little use for gloves this win
ter, though I have been surveying a great deal
for three months. The sun and cock-crowing,
bare ground, etc., remind me of spring.
WINTER. 235
Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook,
on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on
the S. side, I see several small water - bugs
(gyrans) swimming about, as in the spring. . . .
At Ditch Pond, I hear what I suppose to be
a fox barking, an exceedingly husky, hoarse,
and ragged note, prolonged perhaps by the echo,
like a feeble puppy, or even a child endeavoring
to scream, but checked by fear. Yet it is on
a high key. It sounds so through the wood,
while I am in the hollow, that I cannot tell from
which side it comes. I hear it bark forty or
fifty times, at least. It is a peculiar sound,
quite unlike any other woodland sound that I
know. . . .
Who can doubt that men are by a certain fate
what they are, contending with unseen and un-
imagined difficulties, or encouraged and aided
by equally mysterious, auspicious circumstances ?
Who can doubt this essential and innate dif
ference between man and man, when he con
siders a whole race, like the Indian, inevitably
and resignedly passing away in spite of our
efforts to Christianize and educate them ? Indi
viduals accept their fate and live according to it
as the Indian does. Everybody notices that the
Indian retains his habits wonderfully, is still
the same man that the discoverers found. The
fact is, the history of the white man is a history
236 WINTER.
of improvement, that of the red man, a history
of fixed habits or stagnation.
To insure health, a man s relation to nature
must come very near to a personal one. He
must be conscious of a friendliness in her.
When human friends fail or die, she must stand
in the gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life
which deserves the name, unless there is in it a
certain tender relation to nature. This it is
which makes winter warm, and supplies society
in the desert and wilderness. Unless nature
sympathizes with and speaks to us, as it were,
the most fertile and blooming regions are bar
ren and dreary. . . . I do not see that I can live
tolerably without affection for nature. If I feel
no softening toward the rocks, what do they
signify. . . .
The dog is to the fox as the white man to the
red. The former has attained to more clear
ness in his bark ; it is more ringing and musical,
more developed; he explodes the vowels of his
alphabet better, and besides he has made his
place so good in the world that he can run with
out skulking in the open field. What a smoth
ered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the
bark of the fox ! It seems as if he scarcely
dared raise his voice lest he should catch the ear
of his tame cousin and inveterate foe. . . .
I do not think much of that chemistry that
WINTER. 237
can extract corn and potatoes out of a barren
soil, compared with that which can extract
thought and sentiment out of the life of a man
on any soil.
It is in vain to write of the seasons unless you
have the seasons in you.
Jan. 23, 1859 There is a cold N. W. wind,
and I notice that the snow fleas, which were so
abundant over this water yesterday, have hopped
to some lee, i. e., are collected like powder under
the S. E. side of posts or trees, sticks or ridges
in the ice. You are surprised to see that they
manage to get out of the wind. On the S. E.
side of every such barrier along the shore there
is a dark line or heap of them.
Jan. 24, 1841. I almost shrink from the
x^rduousness of meeting men erectly day by day.
Be resolutely and faithfully what you are, be
humbly what you aspire to be. Be sure you
give men the best of your wares, though they be
poor enough, and the gods will h$}p you to lay
up a better store for the f uturer Man s noblest
gift to man is his sincerity, for it embraces his
integrity also 7 Let him not dole out of himself
anxiously to suit their weaker or stronger stom
achs, but make a clear gift of himself, and
empty his coffers at once. I would be in society
as in the landscape ; in the presence of nature
there is no reserve nor effrontery.
238 WINTER.
Coleridge says of the " ideas spoken out every
where in the Old and New Testaments," that
they " resemble the fixed stars which appear of
the same size to the naked or the armed eye, the
magnitude of which the telescope may rather
seem to diminish than to increase."
It is more proper for a spiritual fact to have
suggested an analogous natural one than for the
natural fact to have preceded the spiritual in
our minds.
By spells seriousness will be forced to cut
capers, and drink a deep and refreshing draught
of silliness, to turn this sedate day of Lucifer s
and Apollo s into an all fools day for Harlequin
and Cornwallis. The sun does not grudge his
rays to either, but they are alike patronized by
the gods. Like overtasked school-boys, all my
members and nerves and sinews petition thought
for a recess, and my very thigh bones itch to
slip away from under me, and run and join in
the mele e. I exult in stark inanity. We think
the gods reveal themselves only to sedate and
musing gentlemen, but not so ; the buffoon in
the midst of his antics catches unobserved
glimpses which he treasures for the lonely hour.
When I have been playing torn fool, I have been
driven to exchange the old for a more liberal
and catholic philosophy.
Jan. 24, 1852. If thou art a writer, write as
WINTER. 239
if thy time were short, for it is indeed short, at
the longest. Improve each occasion when the
soul is reached. Drain the cup of inspiration
to its last dregs. Fear no intemperance in that,
for the years will come when otherwise thou
wilt regret opportunities unimproved. The
spring will not last forever. These fertile and
expanding seasons of thy life, when the rain
reaches thy root, when thy vigor shoots, when
thy flower is budding, shall be fewer and farther
between. Again I say, remember thy creator in
the days of thy youth. Use and commit to life
what you cannot commit to memory. I hear the
tones of my sister s piano below. It reminds me
of strains which once I heard more frequently,
when possessed with the inaudible rhythm I
sought my chamber in the cold, and communed
with my own thoughts. I feel as if I then re
ceived the gifts of the gods with too much indif
ference. Why did I not cultivate those fields
they introduced me to? Does nothing with
stand the inevitable march of time? Why did I
not use my eyes when I stood on Pisgah ? Now
I hear those strains but seldom. My rhythmical
niood does not endure. I cannot draw from it
and return to it in my thought as to a well, all
the evening or the morning. I cannot dip my pen
in it. I cannot work the vein, it is so fine and
volatile. Ah, sweet, ineffable reminiscences.
240 WINTER.
In thy journal let there never be a jest. To
the earnest, there is nothing ludicrous. . . .
When the telegraph harp trembles and wavers,
I am most affected, as if it were approaching to
articulation. It sports so with my heart strings.
When the harp dies away a little, then I revive
for it. It cannot be too faint. I almost envy
the Irish whose shanty in the Cut is so near that
they can hear this music daily, standing at their
door. How strange to think that a sound so
soothing, elevating, educating . . . might have
been heard sweeping other strings when only the
red man ranged these fields, might, perchance, in
course of time have civilized him !
Jan. 24, 1856. A journal is a record of ex
periences and growth, not a preserve of things
well done or said. I am occasionally reminded
of a statement which I have made in conversa
tion and immediately forgotten, which would
read much better than what I put in my jour
nal. It is a ripe, dry fruit of long past experi
ence which falls from me easily without giving
pain or pleasure. The charm of the journal must
consist in a certain greenness, though freshness,
and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to
be remembering what I said or did, my scurf
cast off, but what I am and aspire to become.
Reading the hymns of the Rig Yeda, trans
lated by Wilson, which consist, in a great
WINTER. 241
measure, of simple epithets addressed to the fir
mament, or the dawn, or the winds, which mean
more or less as the reader is more or less alert
and imaginative, and seeing how widely the va
rious translators have differed, they regarding
not the poetry, but the history and philology,
dealing with very concise Sanskrit which must
almost always be amplified to be understood, I
am sometimes inclined to doubt if the translator
has not made something out of nothing, whether
a real idea or sentiment has been thus trans
mitted to us from so primitive a period. I doubt
if learned Germans might not thus edit pebbles
from the sea-shore into hymns of the Rig Veda,
and translators translate them accordingly, ex
tracting the meaning which the sea has imparted
to them in very primitive times. While the
commentators and translators are disputing about
the meaning of this word or that, I hear only
the resounding of the ancient sea, and put into
it the deepest meaning I am possessed of, for
I do not the least care where I get my ideas, or
what suggests them. . . .
I have seen many a collection of stately elms
which better deserved to be represented at the
General Court than the manikins beneath,
than the bar-room, the victualing cellar, and
groceries they overshadowed. When I see their
magnificent domes miles away in the horizon,
242 WINTER.
over intervening valleys and forests, they sug
gest a village, a community there. But, after
all, it is a secondary consideration whether there
are human dwellings beneath them. These may
have long since passed away. I find that into
my idea of the village has entered more of the
elm than of the human being. They are worth
many a political borough. They constitute a
borough. The poor human representative of
his party sent out from beneath their shade will
not suggest a tithe of the dignity, the true noble
ness and comprehensiveness of view, the sturdi-
ness and independence, and serene beneficence
that they do. They look from township to
township. . . . They battle with the tempests
of a century. See what scars they bear, what
limbs they lost before we were born. Yet they
never adjourn, they steadily vote for their prin
ciples, and send their roots farther and wider
from the same centre. They die at their posts,
and they leave a tough butt for the choppers to
exercise themselves about, and a stump which
serves for their monument. They attend no
caucus, they make no compromise, they use no
policy. Their one principle is growth. They
combine a true radicalism with a true conserva
tism. Their radicalism is not a cutting away of
roots, but a multiplication and extension of them
under all surrounding institutions. They take
WINTER. 243
a firmer hold on the earth that they may rise
higher into the heavens. . . . Their conserva
tism is a dead but solid heart-wood which is
the pivot and firm column of support to all their
growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but
forever, by its support, assisting to extend the
area of their radicalism. Half a century after
they are dead at the core, they are preserved by
radical reforms. They do not, like men, from
radicals turn conservatives. Their conservative
part dies out first, their radical and growing
part survives. They acquire new states and
territories while the old dominions decay and
become the habitation of bears and owls and
coons.
Jan. 24, 1858. p. M. Nut Meadow Brook.
The river is broadly open as usual this winter.
You can hardly say that we have had any sleigh
ing at all ... though five or six inches of snow
lay on the ground five days after January 6th.
But I do not quite like this warm weather and
bare ground at this season. What is a winter
without snow and ice in this latitude ? The
bare earth is unsightly. This winter is but un-
buried summer. . . .
At Nut Meadow Brook the small sized water-
bugs are as abundant and active as in sum
mer. I see forty or fifty circling together
in the smooth and sunny bays all along the
244 WINTER.
brook. This is something new to me. What
must they think of this winter ? It is like a
child waked up and set to playing at midnight.
They seem more ready than usual to dive to the
bottom when disturbed. At night, of course,
they dive to the bottom and bury themselves,
and if in the morning they perceive no curtain
of ice drawn over their sky and the pleasant
weather continues, they gladly rise again and
resume their gyrations in some sunny bay amid
the alders and the stubble. I think I never
noticed them more numerous, but I never looked
for them so particularly. . . . The sun falling
thus warmly, for so long, on the open surface of
the brook tempts them upward gradually. . . .
What a funny way they have of going to bed.
They do not take a light and retire up-stairs,
they go below. Suddenly it is heels up and
heads down, and they go down to their muddy
bed, and let the unresting stream flow over them
in their dreams. They go to bed in another
element. What a deep slumber must be theirs,
and what dreams down in the mud there ! So
the insect life is not withdrawn far off, but a
warm sun would soon entice it forth. Some
times they seem to have a* little difficulty in
making the plunge. May be they are too dry
to slip under. I saw one floating on its back,
and it struggled a little while before it righted
WINTER. 245
itself. Suppose you were to plot the course of
one for a day. What kind of a figure would it
make ? Probably this feat, too, will one day be
performed by science, that maid of all work. I
see one chasing a mote, and the wave the crea
ture makes always causes the mote to float away
from it. I would like to know what it is they
communicate to one another, they who appear
to value each other s society so much. How
many water-bugs make a quorum ? How many
hundreds does their Fourier think it takes to
make a complete bug? Where did they get
their backs polished so? They will have oc
casion to remember this year, that winter when
we were waked out of our annual sleep. What
is their precise hour for retiring ?
I see stretching from side to side of this
smooth brook where it is three or four feet wide
what seems to indicate an invisible waving line,
like a cobweb, against which the water is heaped
up a very little. This line is constantly swayed
to and fro, as by the current or. wind, bellying
forward here and there. I try repeatedly to
catch and break it with my hand and let the
water run free, but still to my surprise I clutch
nothing but fluid, and the imaginary line keeps
its place. Is it the fluctuating edge of a lighter,
perhaps more oily, fluid, overflowing a heavier ?
I see several such lines. It is somewhat like the
246 WINTER.
slightest conceivable smooth fall over a dam. I
must ask the water-bug that glides across it.
Ah, if I had no more sins to answer for than
a water-bug ! They are only the small water-
bugs that I see. They are earlier in the spring
and apparently hardier than the others. . . .
Between winter and summer there is to my
mind an immeasurable interval. When I pry
into the old bank swallow holes to-day, see the
marks of their bills, and even whole eggs left at
the bottom., these things affect me as the phe
nomena of a former geological period. Yet per
chance the very swallow which laid those eggs
will revisit this hole next spring. The upper
side of her gallery is a low arch quite firm and
durable.
Jan. 24, 1859. ... I see an abundance of
caterpillars of various kinds on the ice of the
meadows, many of them large, dark, hairy, with
longitudinal light stripes, somewhat like the com
mon apple one. Many of them are frozen in
still, some for two thirds their length, though
all are alive. Yet it has been so cold since the
rise that you can now cross the channel almost
anywhere. I also see a great many of those lit
tle brown grasshoppers, and one perfectly green,
some of them frozen in, but generally on the
surface, showing no sign of life, yet when I
brought them home to experiment on, I found
WINTER. 247
them all alive and kicking in my pocket. There
were also a small kind of reddish wasp quite
lively on the ice, and other insects. There were
naked or smooth worms or caterpillars. This
shows what insects have their winter quarters in
the meadow grass. This ice is a good field for
the entomologist. . . . The larger spiders gen
erally rest on the ice with all their bags spread,
but on being touched they gather them up.
Monday, Jan. 25, 1841. On the morning
when the wild geese go over I, too, feel the mi
gratory instinct strong within me, and anticipate
the breaking-lip of winter. If I yielded to this
impulse^ At would surely guide me to summer
haunts. This indefinite restlessness and flut-
teling on the perch no doubt prophesy the final
migration of souls out of nature to a serener
summer, in long harrows and waving lines, in
the spring weather, over what fair uplands and
fertile elysian meadows, winging their way at
evening, and seeking a resting place with loud
cackling and uproar. . . .
We should strengthen and beautify and in
dustriously mould our bodies to be fit compan
ions of the soul, assist them to grow up like
trees, and be agreeable and wholesome objects
in nature. I think if I had had the disposal
of this soul of man, I should have bestowed it
sooner on some antelope of the plains than upon
this sickly and sluggish body.
248 WINTER.
Jan. 25, 1852. . . . The cold for some weeks
has been intense, ... a Canadian winter. . . .
But last night and to-day the weather has mod
erated. It is glorious to be abroad this after
noon, the snow melts on the surface ; the warmth
of the sun reminds me of summer. The dog
runs before us on the railroad causeway, and ap
pears to enjoy it as much as ourselves. . . . The
clay in the deep Cut is melting and streaming
down, glistening in the sun. It is I that melts,
while the harp sounds on high. The snow-drifts
on the west side look like clouds. We turned
down the brook at Heywood s meadow. It was
worth while to see how the water even in the
marsh, where the brook is almost stagnant,
sparkled in this atmosphere, for, though warm,
it is remarkably clear. Water, which in sum
mer would look dark, and perhaps turbid, now
sparkles like the lakes in November. The
water is the more attractive, since all around is
deep snow. The brook here is full of cat-tails,
Typha latifolia, reed-mace. I found on pulling
open, or breaking in my hand as one would
break bread, the still perfect spikes of this fine
reed, that the flowers were red or crimson at
their base where united to the stem. When I
rubbed off what was at first but a thimble full of
these dry flowerets, they suddenly took in air and
flashed up like powder, expanding like feathers
WINTER. 249
or foam, filling and overflowing my hand to
which they imparted a sensation of warmth
quite remarkable. ... I could not tire of re
peating the experiment. I think a single one
would more than fill a half peck measure, if
they lay as light as at first in the air. It is
something magical to one who tries it for the
first time. . . . You do not know at first where
it all comes from. It is the conjurer s trick in
nature, equal to taking feathers enough to fill a
bed out of a hat. When you had done, but yet
scraped the almost bare stem, they still over
flowed your hand as before. ... As the flow
erets are opening and liberating themselves,
showing their red extremities, it has the effect
of a changeable color.
Ah, then, the brook beyond, its rippling wa-
waters and its sunny sands. They made me for
get that it was winter. Where springs oozed
out of the soft bank over the dead leaves and
the green sphagnum, they had melted the snow,
or the snow had melte.d as it fell perchance, and
the rabbits had sprinkled the mud about on the
snow. The sun reflected from the sandy, grav
elly bottom, sometimes a bright sunny streak
no bigger than your finger reflected from a rip
ple as from a prism, and the sunlight reflected
from a hundred points of the surface of the rip
pling brook, enabled me to realize summer. . . .
250 WINTER.
Having gone a quarter of a mile beyond the
bridge where C. calls this his Spanish Brook, I
looked back from the top of the hill into this
deep dell, where the white pines stood thick,
rising one above another, reflecting the sunlight,
so soft and warm by contrast with the snow, as
never in summer, for the idea of warmth pre
vailed over the cold which the snow suggested,
though I saw through and between them to a
distant snow-clad hill, and also to oaks red with
their dry leaves, and maple limbs were mingled
with the pines. I was on the verge of seeing
something, but I did not. If I had been alone,
and had had more leisure, I might have seen
something to report.
Now we are on Fair Haven, still but a snow
plain. Far down the river the shadows on Co-
nantum are bluish. . . . The sun is half an hour
high, perhaps. Standing near the outlet of the
pond, I look up and down the river with delight,
it is so warm, and the air is notwithstanding so
clear. When I invert my head and look at the
woods half a mile down the stream, they sud
denly sink lower in the horizon, and are re
moved full two miles off. Yet the air is so clear
that I seem to see every stem and twig with
beautiful distinctness. The fine tops of the
trees are so relieved against the sky, that I never
cease to admire the minute subdivisions. It is
WINTER. 251
the same when I look up the stream. A bare
hickory under Lee s Cliff seen against the sky
becomes an interesting, even beautiful object to
behold. I think, where have I been staying all
these days ? I will surely come here again.
Jan. 25, 1853. ... I have noticed that
leaves are green and violets bloom later where a
bank has been burnt over in the fall, as if the
fire warmed it. Saw to-day where a creeping
juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of Johns-
wort, thistle, clover, a dandelion, etc., as well as
so>rel and veronica.
Jan. 25, 1856. ... A closed pitch pine cone,
gathered January 22d, opened last night in my
chamber. If you would be convinced how differ
ently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing
with pitch pine cones, just try to get one open
with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds
from a single closed cone, with the aid of a
knife, will be constrained to confess that the
squirrel earns his dinner. He has the key to
this conical and spiny chest of many apart
ments. He sits on a post vibrating his tail,
and twirls it as a plaything. So is a man com
monly a locked-up chest to us, to open whom,
unless we have the key of sympathy, will make
our hearts bleed. x
Jan. 25, 1858. . . . What a rich book might
be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts.
252 WINTER.
The impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but
half asleep along the twigs, under the armor of
their black scales, the birch and oak sprouts,
the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts, the sound,
red buds of the blueberry, the small pointed red
buds, close to the twig, of the panicled androm-
eda, the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink,
etc. How healthy and vivacious must he be
who would treat of these things.
You must love the crust of the earth on which
you dwell more than the sweet crust of any
bread, or cake ; you must be able to extract
nutriment out of a sand heap. . . .
The creditor is servant to his debtor, espe- /
cially if the latter is about paying any his djje.
I am amused to see what airs men take upon
themselves when they have money to pay me,
no matter how long they have deferred it. They
imagine that they are my benefactors or patrons,
and send me word graciously that, if I will come
to their houses, they will pay me, when it is
their business to come to me.
Jan. 25, 1860. . . . When the river begins
to break up, it becomes clouded like a mackerel
sky, but in this case, the blue portions are where
the current clearing away the ice beneath begins
to show dark. The current of the water strik
ing the ice breaks it up at last into portions of
the same form with those which the wind gives
to vapor.
WINTER. 253
Jan. 26, 1840. Constantly, as it were, through
a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene
friendship-land, and know the better why brooks
murmur and violets grow./
Jan. 26, 1841. I have as much property as
I can command and use. If by a fault in my
character I do not derive my just revenues, there
is virtually a mortgage on nay inheritance. A
man s wealth is never entered in the regis
trar s office. Wealth does not come in along
the great thoroughfares, it does not float on the
Erie or Pennsylvania canal, but is imported by
a solitary track without bustle or competition
from a brave industry to a quiet mind.
I had a dream last night which had reference
to an act in my life, in which I had been most
disinterested, and true to my highest instinct,
but completely failed in realizing my hopes ;
and now, after so many months, in the stillness
of sleep, complete justice was rendered me. It
was a divine remuneration. In my waking
hours, I could not have conceived of such retri
bution ; the presumption of desert would have
damned the whole. But now I was permitted
to be not so much a subject as a partner to that
retribution. It was the award of divine justice
which will at length be, and is even now, accom
plished.
Good writing as well as good acting will be
254 WINTER.
obedience to conscience. There must not be a
particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we
can listen we shall hear. By reverently listen
ing to the inner voice, we may reinstate our
selves on the pinnacle of humanity.
Jan. 27, 1841. In the compensation of the
dream, there was no implied loss to any, but
immeasurable advantage to all.
The punishment of sin is not positive as is
the reward of virtue.
For a flower, I like the name pansy or pensee
best of any.
Jan. 26, 1852. Whatever has been produced
on the spur of the moment will bear to be re
considered and reformed with phlegm. The
arrow had best not be loosely shot. The most
transient and passing remark must be recon
sidered by the writer, made sure and warranted,
as if the earth had rested on its axle to back it,
and all the natural forces lay behind it. The
writer must direct his sentence as carefully and
leisurely as the marksman his rifle, who is sit
ting and with a rest, with patent sights and con
ical balls beside. He must not merely seem to
speak the truth. He must really speak it. If
you foresee that a part of your essay will topple
down after the lapse of time, throw it down
now yourself.
A tree seen against other trees is a mere
WINTER, 255
dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, has
symmetry and expansion. . . . The thousand
fine points and tops of the trees delight me.
They are the plumes and standards and bayonets
of a host that march to victory over the earth.
The trees are handsome toward the heavens, as
well as up their boles. They are good for other
things than boards and shingles.
Obey the spur of the moment. These ac
cumulated it is that make the "impulse and the
impetus of the life of genius. These are the
spongioles and rootlets by which its trunk is
fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off
your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life
is to be expected. Let the spurs of countless
moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel
the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side.
The present is an inexorable rider. The mo
ment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt
spur. Are my sides calloused? Let us trust
the rider that he knows the way, that he knows
when speed and effort are required. What
other impulse do we wait for ?
Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect
the coincidence of our life with the life of
nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and
night, sun, moon, and stars to us ? Was it not
from sympathy with the present life of nature
that we were born at this epoch rather than at
256 WINTER.
another ? . . . My life as essentially belongs to
the present as that of a willow tree in the
spring. Now, now, its catkins expand, its yel
low bark shines, its sap flows, now or never
must you make whistles of it. Get the day to
back you. Let it back you, and the night.
The truest account of heaven is the fairest,
and I will accept none which disappoints ex
pectation. It is more glorious to expect a better,
than to enjoy a worse.
When the thermometer is down to 20, the
streams of thought tinkle underneath like the
rivers under the ice. .Thought, like the ocean,
is nearly of one temperature. . . .
In winter we will think brave, hardy, and
most native thoughts. Then the tender summer
birds are flown.
In few countries do they enjoy so fine a con
trast of summer and winter. We really have four
seasons, each incredible to the other. Winter
cannot be mistaken for summer here. Though
I see the boat turned up on the shore, and
half buried under snow, as I walk over the invis
ible river, summer is far away with its rustling
reeds. It only suggests the want of thrift, the
carelessness of its owner.
Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy
expresses a particle of it.
Would you see your mind, look into the sky.
WINTER. 257
Would you know your own moods, be weather-
wise. He whom the weather disappoints, dis
appoints himself.
Let all things give way to the impulse of ex
pression. It is the bud unfolding, the perennial
spring. As well stay the spring. Who shall
resist the thaw ? . . .
The word is well naturalized or rooted that
can be traced back to a Celtic original. It is
like getting out stumps and fat pine roots. . . .
Nature never indulges in exclamations, never
says ah ! or alas ! She is not French. She is
a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not add
to her verbs, uses few adverbs, no expletives. I
find that I use many words for the sake of em
phasis, which really add nothing to the force of
my sentences, and they look relieved the mo
ment I have canceled these, words which ex
press my mood, my conviction, rather than the
simple truth.
Youth supplies us with colors, age with can
vas. . . . Paint is costly. ... I think the heavens
have had but one coat of paint since I was a
boy, and their blue is paled and dingy and
worn off in many places. I cannot afford to
give them another coat. Where is the man so
rich that he can give the earth a second coat of
green in his manhood, or the heavens a second
coat of blue. Our paints are all mixed when
258 WINTER.
we are young. . . . You would not suspect that
some men s heavens had ever been azure or
celestial, but that their painter had cheated
them. . . .
It is good to break and smell the black birch
twigs now. The lichens look rather bright to
day. . . . When they are bright and expanded,
is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain ? The beauty
of lichens with their scalloped leaves, the small at
tractive fields, the crinkled edge ! I could study
a single piece of bark for hours. How they
flourish ! I sympathize with their growth. . . .
From these cliffs at this moment, the clouds
in the west have a singular brassy color, and
they are arranged in an unusual manner. A
new disposition of the clouds will make the most
familiar country appear foreign, like Tartary or
Arabia Felix. . . .
Jan. 26, 1853. Up river on ice, 9 A. M.,
above Pantry. A sharp cutting air. This is a
pretty good winter morning, however. Not one
of the rarer. There are from time to time
mornings, both in summer and winter, when es
pecially the world seems to begin anew, beyond
which memory need not go, for not behind them
is yesterday and our past life, when as in the
morning of a hoar frost there are visible the
effects as of a certain creative energy. The
world has visibly been recreated in the night.
WINTER. 259
Mornings of creation I call them. In the midst
of these marks of a creative energy recently
active, while the sun is rising with more than
usual splendor, I look back for the era of this
creation not into the night, but to a dawn for
which no man ever rose early enough a morn
ing which carries us back beyond the Mosaic
creation, where crystallizations are fresh and
unmelted. It is the poet s hour. Mornings
when men are new born, men who have the
seeds of life in them. It should be a part of
my religion to be abroad then. This is not one
of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter
day.
It is surprising how much room there is in
nature if a man will follow his proper path. In
these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on
this stretching river, I never meet a walker.
Passing behind the farm-houses, I see no man
out. Perhaps I do not meet so many men as I
should have met three centuries ago when the
Indian hunter roamed these woods. I enjoy the
retirement and solitude of an early settler. Men
have cleared some of the earth, which is no
doubt an advantage to the walker. I see a man
sometimes chopping in the woods, or planting or
hoeing in a field at a distance, and yet there
may be a lyceum meeting in the evening, and
there is a book shop and library in the village,
260 WINTER.
and five times a day I can be whirled to Boston
in an hour. . . .
A slight fine snow has fallen in the night and
drifted before the wind. I observe that it is so
distributed over the ice as to show equal spaces
of bare ice and of snow at pretty regular dis
tances. I have seen the same phenomenon on
the surface of snow in fields as if the little
drifts disposed themselves according to the same
law that makes waves of water. There is now
a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice,
which continually lodges here and there, and
forthwith a little drift accumulates. But why
does it lodge at such regular intervals ? I see
this fine drifting snow in the air, ten or twelve
feet high at a distance. Perhaps it may have
to do with the manner in, or the angle at, which
the wind strikes the earth.
Jan. 26, 1855 . . . P. M. A thick driving
snow, something like, but less than, that of the
19th. There is a strong easterly wind. ... I
am afraid I have not described vividly enough
the aspect of that lodging snow of the 19th and
to-day partly. Imagine the innumerable twigs
and boughs of the forest, as you stand in its
midst, crossing each other at every conceivable
angle on every side, from the ground to thirty
feet in height, with each its zigzag wall of snow
four or five inches high, so innumerable at dif-
WINTER. 261
ferent distances, one behind another, that they
completely close up the view like a loose woven
and downy screen into which, however, stooping
and winding, you ceaselessly advance. The win
triest scene, which perhaps can only be seen in
perfection while the snow is yet falling before
wind and thaw begin. Else you miss the deli
cate touch of the Master. A coarse woof and
warp of snowy batting, leaving no space for a
bird to perch. I see where a partridge has
waddled through the snow still falling, mak
ing a continuous track. I look in the direc
tion to which it points, and see the bird just
skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off. The
plumes of pitch pines are first filled up solid,
and then they begin to make great snowy casse-
tetes or pestles. In the fields the air is thick
with driving snow. You see only a dozen rods
into its warp and woof. It fills either this ear
or that and your eyes with hard, cutting, blind
ing scales, if you face it. It is forming shelly
drifts behind the walls, and stretches in folds
across the roads. But in deep, withdrawn hol
lows in the woods the flakes at last come gently
and deviously down, lodging on every twig and
leaf, forming deep, downy, level beds between,
and on the ice of the pools.
Jan. 26, 1856. . . . As I was talking with
Miss Mary Emerson this evening, she said, " It
262 WINTER.
was not the fashion to be so original when I was
young." She is readier to take my view, to look
through my eyes for the time being, than any
young woman that I know in the town.
Jan. 26, 1858. . . . One may eat and drink
and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties
of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a
doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if
his life is as valuable and divine as that of an
oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the
town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick him
self with a pin to see if he is alive. It is won
derful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a liv
ing creature may be. No more energy may it
have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a
decaying tree. I raised last summer a squash
which weighed 123^ Ibs. If it had fallen on me
it would have made as deep and lasting an im
pression as most men do. I would just as lief
know what it thinks about God as what most
men think, or are said to think. In such a
squash you have already got the bulk of a man.
Many a man, perchance, when I have put such
a question to him, opens his eyes for a moment,
essays to think like a rusty firelock out of order,
then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat,
and goes to sleep, as it is called, and that is no
great distance to go, surely.
Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words,
WINTER. 263
mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes,
as the bear treats her cubs, words like tribal
and ornamentation which drag a dead tail after
them. They will pick you out of a thousand the
still-born words, the falsettoes, the wing-clipt and
lame words, as if only the false notes caught
their ears. They cry encore to all the discords.
The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens
cackle and scratch all this winter. Eggs must
be plenty.
Jan. 1840. You might as well think to go
in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the
next hill as to embrace the complete idea of poetry
even in thought, The best book is only an ad
vertisement of it, such as is sometimes sewed in
with its cover. It has a logic more severe than
the logician s.
Jan. 27, 1840. What a tame life we are
living ! How little heroic it is ! Let us devise
never so perfect a system of living, and straight
way the soul leaves it to shuffle along its own
way alone. It is easy enough to establish a dur
able and harmonious routine. Immediately all
parts of nature consent to it. The sun-dial still
points to the noon mark, and the sun rises and
sets for it. The neighbors are never fatally ob
stinate when such a scheme is to be instituted,
but forthwith all lend a hand, ring the bell,
bring fuel and lights, put by work, and don their
264 WINTER.
best garments, with an earnest conformity which
matches the operations of nature. There is al
ways a present and extant life which men com
bine to uphold, though its insufficiency is mani
fest enough. Still the sing-song goes on. Only
make something take the place of something,
and men will behave as if it were the thing they
wanted. They must behave at any rate, and
will work up any material.
Jan. 27, 1852. The peculiarity of a work of
genius is the absence of the speaker from his
speech. He is but the medium. You behold a
perfect work, but you do not behold the worker.
I read its page, but it is as free from any man
that can be remembered as an impassable desert.
I think that the one word which will explain
the Shakespeare miracle is unconsciousness. If
he had known his own comparative eminence, he
would not have failed to publish it incessantly,
though Bacon did not. There probably has been
no more conscious age than the present. . . .
I do not know but thoughts written down
thus in a journal might be printed in the same
form with greater advantage than if the related
ones were brought together into separate essays.
They are now allied to life, and are seen by the
reader not to be far-fetched. It is ... less
artificial. I feel that in the other case I should
have no proper frame for my sketches. Mere
WINTER. 265
facts and names and dates communicate more
than we suspect. Whether the flower looks
better in the nosegay than in the meadow where
it grew, and we had to wet our feet to get it ! Is
the scholastic air any advantage ?
Jan. 28, 1852. Perhaps I can never find so
good a setting for my thoughts as I shall thus
have taken them out of. The crystal never
sparkles more brightly than in the cavern. The
world has always loved best the fable with the
moral. The children could read the fable alone
the grown up read both. The truth so told
has the best advantage of the most abstract state
ment, for it is not the less universally applicable.
Where else will you ever find the cement for
your thoughts ? How will you ever rivet them
together without leaving the marks of the file ?
Yet Plutarch did not so. Montaigne did not so.
Men have written travels in this form, but per
haps no man s daily life has been rich enough
to be journalized. Our life should be so active
and progressive as to be a journey. Our meals
should all be of journey cake and hasty pudding.
We should be more alert, see the sun rise, not
keep fashionable hours, enter a house, our own
house as a khan or caravansary. At noon I did
not dine, I ate my journey cake, I quenched my
thirst at a spring or a brook. As I sat at the
table, the hospitality was so perfect and the re-
266 WINTER.
past so sumptuous that I seemed to be breaking
my fast upon a bank in the midst of an arduous
journey, that the water seemed to be a living
spring, the napkins grass, the conversation free
as the winds, and the servants that waited on us
were our simple desires. Cut off from Pilpay
and ^Esop the moral alone at the bottom, would
that content you ?
Jan. 27, 1853. Trench says a wild man is a
willed man ; well, then, a man of will who does
what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of
the future tense, for not only the obstinate is
willed, but, far more, the constant and persever
ing. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is
one who wills not. The perseverance of the
saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive
willingness. The fates are wild, for they will,
and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.
What are our fields but felds or felled woods.
They bear a more recent name than the woods,
suggesting that previously the earth was covered
with woods. Always in a new country a field is
a clearing.
Jan. 27, 1854. I have an old account book
found in Dea. R. Brown s garret since his death.
The first leaf or two is gone. Its cover is
brown paper, on which, amid many marks and
scribblings, I find written :
WINTER. 267
"MR. EPHRAIM JONES
His WAST BOOK
ANNO DOMINI
1742."
It extends from November 8, 1742, to June 20,
1743, inclusive. It appears without doubt from
the contents of this book that [this Jones] is the
one of whom Shattuck writes in his history that
he "married Mary Hayward, 1728, and died
Nov. 29, 1756, aged 51, having been captain,
town- clerk, and otherwise distinguished." His
father s name was Ephraim, and he had a son
Ephraim. . . . The book is filled with familiar
Concord names, the grandfathers and great
grandfathers of the present generation. Dr.
Hartshorn, who lived to be ninety-two, and Dr.
Temple send to the store once or twice. It is
more important now what was bought than who
bought it. The articles most commonly bought
are mohair (a kind of twist to sew on buttons
with), usually with buttons, rum, ofteft only a
gill to drink at the store (more of these than
anything else), salt, molasses, shalloon, fish,
calico, some sugar, a castor hat, almanac, psal
ter, and sometimes primer and testament, paper,
knee - buckles and shoe - buckles, garters and
spurs, . . . deer skins, a fan, a cart -whip,
various kinds of cloth and trimmings, . . .
gloves, a spring knife, an ink-horn, a gun cap,
268 WINTER.
spice, . . . timber, iron, earthenware, etc., no
tea (I am in doubt about one or two entries),
nor coffee, nor meal, nor flour. Of the last two
they probably raised all they wanted. Credit is
frequently given for timber, and once for cloth
brought to the store.
On the whole, it is remarkable how little pro
vision was sold at the store. The inhabitants
raised almost everything for themselves. Choc
olate is sold once. Rum, salt, molasses, fish, a
biscuit with their drink, a little spice and the
like, are all that commonly come under this head
that I remember. On a loose piece of paper
... is Jonathan D wight s (innholder s (?))
bill against the estate of Captain Ephraim Jones
for entertainment, etc. (apparently he treated his
company), at divers times for half a dozen years,
amounting to over X146. The people appar
ently made their own cloth and even thread, and
hence for the most part bought only buttons and
mohair and a few trimmings. . . .
Jan. 18th 42 (3) " John Melvin C r . by 1
Grey fox 0-2-3."
Feb. 14 42 (3) "Aaron Parker C r . by
100 squirell skins 0-6-3." Deer skins were
sold at from ten to seventeen shillings. Some
times it is written " old " or " new tenor."
Many of the customers came from as far as Har
vard or much farther. .
WINTER. 269
No butter, nor rice, nor oil, nor candles are
sold. They must have used candles, made their
own butter, and done without rice. There is no
more authentic history of those days than this
"Wast Book" contains, and relating to money
matters, it is more explicit than almost any
other statement. Something must be said.
Each line contains and states explicitly a fact.
It is the best of evidence of several facts. It
tells distinctly and authoritatively who sold, who
bought, the article, amount, and value, and the
date. You could not easily crowd more facts
into one line. You are informed when the doc
tor or deacon had a new suit of clothes by the
charge for mohair, buttons and trimmings, or a
castor hat, and here also is entered the rum
which ran down their very throats. . . .
We begin to die not in our senses and extrem
ities, but in our divine faculties. Our members
may be sound, our sight and hearing perfect,
but our genius and imagination betray signs of
decay. You tell me that you are growing old,
and are troubled to see without glasses, but this
is unimportant if the divine faculty of the seer
shows no signs of decay.
Jan. 27, 1857. . . . The most poetic and
truest account of objects is generally given by
those who first observe them, or the discoverers
of them, whether a sharper perception and
270 WINTER.
curiosity in them led to the discovery or the
greater novelty more inspired their report. Ac
cordingly, I love most to read the accounts of a
country, its natural productions and curiosities,
by those who first settled it, and also the earliest,
though often unscientific writers on natural sci
ence.
Jan. 27, 1858. p. M. To Hill and beyond.
It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by
the wall and east of the hill that I remember or
anticipate one of those warm rain storms in the
spring when the earth is just laid bare, the wind
is south, and the Cladonia lichens are swollen
and lusty with moisture, your foot sinking into
them, and pressing the water out as from a
sponge, and the sandy places also are drinking
it in. You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat,
wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad
rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of mi
grating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit
long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. A
rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggest
ing fairer weather than was ever seen. You
could hug the clods that defile you. You feel
the fertilizing influence of the rain in your
mind. The part of you that is wettest is fullest
of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences
of immortality not known to divines. You
cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts
WINTER. 271
of life. Every step in the old rye field is on
virgin soil. And then the rain comes thicker
and faster than before, thawing the remaining
part of the ground, detaining the migrating
bird, and you turn your back to it, full of se
rene, contented thoughts, soothed by the steady
dropping on the withered leaves, more at home
for being abroad, sinking at each step deep into
the thawing earth, gladly breaking through the
gray rotting ice. The dullest sounds seem
sweetly modulated by the air. You leave your
tracks in fields of spring rye, scaring the fox-
colored sparrows along the woodsides, . . . full
of joy and expectation, seeing nothing but
beauty, hearing nothing but music, as free as
the fox-colored sparrow, . . . not indebted to
any academy or college for this expansion, but
chiefly to the April sun which shineth on all
alike, not encouraged by men in your walks, not
by the divines or the professors, and to the law
giver an outlaw. . . . Steadily the eternal rain
falls, drip, drip, drip, the mist drives and clears
your sight, the wind blows and warms your sit
ting on that sanely upland that April day.
Jan. 27, 1859. I see some of those little
cells, perhaps of a wasp or bee, made of clay or
clayey mud. It suggests that those insects were
the first potters. They look somewhat like
small stone jugs.
272 WINTER.
Jan. 27, 1860. . . . When you think your
walk is profitless and a failure, and you can
hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on
the point of being a success, for then you are
in that subdued and knocking mood to which
nature never fails to open.
Jan. 28, 1841. No innocence can quite stand
up under suspicion, if it is conscious of being
suspected. In the company of one who puts a
mean construction upon your actions, they are
apt really to deserve such a construction. While
in that society I can never retrieve myself. At
tribute to me a great motive and I shall not fail
to have one, but a mean one, and the fountain of
virtue will be poisoned by the suspicion. Show
men unlimited faith as the coin with which you
will deal with them, and they will invariably
exhibit the best wares they have. I would
meet men as the friend of all their virtue, and
the foe of all their vice, for no man is the part
ner of his guilt.
If you suspect me, you will never see me, but
all our intercourse will be the politest leave-tak
ing. I shall constantly defer and apologize, and
postpone myself in your presence. The self-
defender is accursed in the sight of gods and
men ; he is a superfluous knight who serves no
lady in the land. He will find in the end that
he has been fighting windmills, and has battered
WINTER. 273
his mace to no purpose. The injured man
resisting his fate is like a tree struck fTy light
ning which rustles its sere leaves the winter
through, not having vigor enough to cast them
off. ...
Eesistance is a very wholesome and delicious
morsel at times. When Venus advanced against
the Greeks with resistless valor, it was by far
the most natural attitude into which the poet
could throw his hero, to make him resist hero
ically. To a devil one might yield gracefully,
but a god would be a worthy foe, and would par
don the affront. . . .
Let your mood determine ihe form of saluta
tion, and approach the creature with a natural
nonchalance, as though he were anything but
what he is, and you were anything but what you
are, as though he were he, and you were you
in short, as though he were so insignificant
that it did not signify and so important that
it did not import./
Jan. 28, 18>2. . . . They showed me Johnny
Riorden to-day, with one thickness of ragged
cloth over his little shirt for all this cold weather,
with shoes having large holes in the toes into
which the snow got, as he said, without an outer
garment, walking a mile to school every day
over the bleakest of causeways where I know,
by my own experience, a grown man could not
274 WINTER.
walk at times without freezing his ears, if they
were exposed, but infant blood circulates faster.
The clothes with countless patches which claimed
descent from pantaloons of mine set as if his
mother had fitted them to a tea-kettle first.
This little specimen of humanity, this tender
gobbet of the fates cast into a cold world with
a torn lichen leaf wrapped about him ; is man
so cheap that he cannot be clothed but with a
mat or rag? that we should bestow on him our
cold victuals ? . . . Let the mature rich wear
the rags and insufficient clothing, let the infant
poor wear the purple and fine linen. I shudder
when I think of the fate of innocency. ... A
charity which dispenses the crumbs which fall
from its overloaded tables, which are left after
its feasts, whose waste and whose example pro
duced that poverty !
3 P. M. Went round by Tuttle s road and
so out on to the Walden road. These warmer
days the wood -chopper finds that the wood
cuts easier than when it had the frost in its sap-
wood, though it does not split so readily. Thus
every change in the weather has its influence on
him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar
way. The wood-cutter and his practices and ex
periences are more to be attended to. His ac
cidents, perhaps more than any others, should
mark the epochs in the winter day. Now that
WINTER. 275
the Indian is gone, he stands nearest to nature.
Who has written the history of his day ? How
far still is the writer of books from the man,
his old playmate it may be, who chops in the
woods ? There are ages between them. Homer
refers to the progress of the woodcutter s work
to mark the time of day on the plains of Troy,
and the inference commonly is that he lived in a
more primitive state of society than the present.
But I think this is a mistake. Like proves like
in all ages, and the fact that I myself should
take pleasure in referring to just such simple
and peaceful labors which are always proceed
ing, that the contrast itself always attracts the
civilized poet to what is rudest and most primi
tive in his contemporaries, all this rather proves
a certain interval between the poet and the chop
per whose labor he refers to, than an unusual
nearness to him, on the principle that familiar
ity breeds contempt. Homer is to be subjected
to a very different kind of criticism from any
he has received. That reader who most fully
appreciates the poet, and derives the greatest
pleasure from his work, himself lives in circum
stances most like those of the poet himself.
About Brister s spring the ferns which have
been covered with snow are still quite green.
The skunk - cabbage in the water is already
pushed up, and I find the pinkish head of flowers
within its spathe is bigger than a pea.
276 WINTER.
Jan. 28, 1853. Saw three ducks sailing in
the river . . . this afternoon, black with white
on wings, though these two or three have been
the coldest days of the winter, and the river is
generally closed.
Jan. 28, 1857. Am again surprised to see a
song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile
... in the midst of snow in the yard. It is un
willing to move. People go to the pump, and
the cat and dog walk round the wood-pile with
out starting it. I examine it at my leisure
through a glass. Remarkable that this coldest
of all winters this bird should remain. Perhaps
it is no more comfortable this season farther
south where they are accustomed to abide. In
the afternoon this sparrow joined a flock of tree
sparrows on the bare ground west of the house.
It was amusing to see the tree sparrows wash
themselves, standing in the puddles and tossing
the water over themselves. They have had no
opportunity to wash for a month perhaps, there
having been no thaw. The song sparrow did
not go off with them.
Jan. 28, 1858. Minott has a sharp ear for
the note of any migratory bird. Though confined
to his dooryard by rheumatism, he commonly
hears them sooner than the widest rambler.
May be he listens all day for them, or they come
and sing over his house, report themselves to
WINTER. 277
him, and receive their season ticket. He is never
at fault. If he says he heard such a bird,
though sitting by his chimney side, you may de
pend on it. He can swear through glass. He
has not spoiled his ears by attending lectures and
caucuses. The other day the rumor went that a
flock of geese had been seen flying over Con
cord, mid-winter as it was by the almanac. I
traced it to Minott, and yet I was compelled to
doubt. I had it directly that he had heard them
within a week. I made haste to him, his repu
tation was at stake. He said that he stood in
his shed one of the late muggy, April-like morn
ings, when he heard one short, but distinct honk
of a goose. He went into the house, took his
cane, exerted himself, or that sound imparted
strength to him, lame as he was, went up on to
the hill, a thing he had not done for a year, that
he might hear all around. He saw nothing, but
heard the note again. It came from over the
brook. It was a wild goose. He was sure of it.
He thought that the back of the winter was
broken, if it had any this year, but he feared
such a winter would kill him too. Hence the
rumor spread and grew. I was silent, pondered,
and abandoned myself to unseen guides. I
drew into my mind all its members like the tor
toise. Suddenly the truth flashed on me, and I
remembered that within a week I had heard of
278 WINTER.
a box at the tavern which had come by railroad
express containing three wild geese, and directed
to his neighbor over the brook. The April-like
morning had excited one so that he honked, and
Minott s reputation acquired new lustre. . . .
As I come through the village at 11 p. M., the
sky is completely overcast, and the perhaps thin
clouds are very distinctly pink or reddish, some
what as if reflecting a distant fire, but this phe
nomenon is universal, all round and overhead.
I suspect there is a red aurora borealis behind.
Jan. 29, 1840. A friend in history looks like
some premature soul. The nearest approach to
a community of love in these days is like the
distant breaking of waves on the sea-shore. An
ocean there must be, for it washes our beach.
This alone do all men sail for, trade for, plow
for, preach for, fight for.
The Greeks, like those of the south generally,
expressed themselves with more facility than we,
in distinct and lively images, and so far as re
lates to the grace and completeness with which
they treated the subjects suited to their genius,
they must be allowed to retain their ancient su
premacy. But a rugged and uncouth array of
thought, though never so modern, may rout them
at any moment. It remains for other than
Greeks to write the literature of the next cen
tury.
WINTER. 279
.^Eschylus had a clear eye for the commonest
things. His genius was only an enlarged com
mon sense. He adverts with chaste severity to
all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sin
cerity and simpleness, naked wonder at what
mythology had not helped to explain. He is
competent to express any of the common manly
feelings. If his hero is to make a boast, it does
not lack fullness, it is as boastful as could be
desired. He has a flexible mouth and can fill
it readily with strong, sound words, so that you
will say the man s speech wants nothing. He
has left nothing unsaid, but has actually wiped
his lips of it. Whatever the common eye sees
at all and expresses as best it may, he sees un
commonly, and expresses with rare complete
ness. The multitude that thronged the theatre
could no doubt go along with him to the end.
The Greeks had no transcendent geniuses like
Milton and Shakespeare, whose merit only pos
terity could fully appreciate.
The social condition is the same in all ages.
.ZEschylus was undoubtedly alone and without
sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery
of the universe.
Jan. 29, 1841. There is something proudly
thrilling in the thought that this obedience to
conscience and trust in God, which is so sol
emnly preached in extremities and arduous cir-
280 WINTER.
cumstances, is only a retreat to one s self and
reliance on one s own strength. In trivial cir
cumstances I find myself sufficient to myself,
and in the most momentous, I have no ally but
myself, and must silently put by their harm
by my own strength, as I did with the former.
As my own hand bent aside the willow in my
path, so must my single arm put to flight the
devil and his angels. God is not our ally when
we shrink, and neuter when we are bold. .
When you trust, do not lay aside your armor, but
put it on and buckle it tighter. If by reliance
on the gods I have disbanded one of my forces,
then was it poor policy. . . . There is more of
God and divine help in a man s little finger
than in idle prayer and trust.
The best and bravest deed is that which the
whole man, heart, lungs, hands, fingers, and toes
at any time prompt. Each hanger-on in the
purlieus of the camp . . . must fall into the line
of march. If a single sutler delay to make up
his pack, then suspect the fates and consult the
oracles again. This is the meaning of integrity ;
this it is to be an integer, and not a fraction.
Be even for all virtuous ends, but odd for all
vice. . . .
Friends will have to be introduced each time
they meet. They will be eternally strange to
one another, and when they have mutually ap-
WINTER. 281
propriated the last hour, they will go and gather
a new measure of strangeness for the next. They
are like two boughs crossed in the wood, which
play backwards and forwards upon one another
in the wind, and only wear into each other, but
never does the sap of the one flow into the pores
of the other, for then the wind would no more
draw from them those strains which enchanted
the wood. They are not two united, but rather
one divided.
Of all strange and unaccountable things this
journalizing is the strangest. It will allow noth
ing to be predicated of it. Its good is not good,
nor its bad, bad. If I make a huge effort to
expose my innermost and richest wares to light,
my counter seems cluttered with the meanest
home-made stuff, but after months or years, I
may discover the wealth of India, and whatever
rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that
confused heap, and what seemed perhaps a fes
toon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a
string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Co-
romandel.
Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as
effectually concealed as the landscape by a mist ;
and when at length some unforeseen accident
throws me into a new attitude toward them, I
am astounded as if for the first time I saw the
sun on the hillside. They lie out before me like
282 WINTER.
a new order of things, as when the master meets
his pupil as a man. Then first do we stand un
der the same heavens, and master and pupil alike
go down the resistless ocean stream together.
Jan. 29, 1852. We must be very active, if
we would be clean, live our own life and not a
languishing and scurvy one. The trees which
are stationary are covered with parasites, espe
cially those which have grown slowly. The air
is filled with the fine sporules of countless
mosses, algae, lichens, fungi, which settle and
plant themselves on all quiet surfaces. Under
the nails and between the joints of the fingers
of the idle flourish crops of mildew, algae,
fungi, and other vegetable sloths, though they
may be invisible, the lichens where life still
exists, the fungi where decomposition has begun
to take place, and the sluggard is soon covered
with sphagnum. Algae take root in the corners
of his eyes, and lichens cover the bulbs of his
fingers and his head. . . . This is the definition
of dirt. We fall a prey to others of nature s
tenants who take possession of the unoccupied
house. With the utmost inward alacrity we
have to wash and comb ourselves ... to get rid
of the adhering seeds. Cleanliness is by activ
ity not to give any quiet shelf for the seeds of
parasitic plants to take root on. ...
The forcible writer does not go far for his
WINTER. 283
themes. His ideas are not far-fetched. He de
rives inspiration from his chagrins and his satis
factions. His theme being ever an instant one,
his own gravity assists him, gives impetus to
what he says. He does not speculate while
others drudge for him.
I am often reminded that if I had bestowed
on me the wealth of Croasus, my aims must
still be the same, and my means essentially the
same. . . .
Few are the days when the telegraph harp
rises into a pure, clear melody. The wind may
blow strong or soft in this or that direction,
naught will you hear but a low hum or murmur,
or even a buzzing sound, but at length when some
un distinguishable zephyr blows, when the con
ditions, not easy to be detected, arrive, it sud
denly and unexpectedly rises into melody, as if a
god had touched it, and fortunate is the walker
who chances to be within hearing. So is it with
the lyres of bards. For the most part it is
only a feeble and ineffectual hum that comes
from them, which leads you to expect the mel
ody you do not hear. When the gale is modi
fied, when the favorable conditions occur and
the indescribable coincidence takes place, then
there is music. Of a thousand buzzing strings,
only one yields music. It is like the hum of
the shaft or other machinery of a steamboat,
284 WINTER.
which at length might become music in a divine
hand. . . .
Heard C. lecture to-night. It was a bushel
of nuts, perhaps the most original lecture I ever
heard ; ever so unexpected, not to be foretold,
and so sententious that you could not look at
him, and take his thought at the same time.
You had to give your undivided attention to the
thoughts, for you were not assisted by set
phrases or modes of speech intervening. There
was no sloping up or down to or from his points.
It was all genius, no talent. It required more
close attention, more abstraction from surround
ing circumstances than any lecture I have heard,
for well as I know C., he more than any man
disappoints my expectation. When I meet him
in the dark, hear him, I cannot realize that I
ever saw him before. He will be strange, un
expected to his best acquaintance. I cannot as
sociate the lecturer with the companion of my
walks. The lecture was from so original and
peculiar a point of view, yet just to himself in
the main, that I doubt if three in the audience
apprehended a tithe of what he said. It was so
hard to hear that doubtless few made the exer
tion, a thick succession of mountain passes, and
no intermediate slopes and plains. Other lec
tures, even the best, in which so much space is
given to the elaborate development of a few
WINTER. 285
ideas, seemed somewhat meagre in comparison.
Yet it would be how much more glorious if tal
ent were added to genius, if there were a just
arrangement and development of the thoughts,
if each step were not a leap, but he ran a space
to take a yet higher leap. Most of the specta
tors sat in front of the performer, but here was
one who, by accident, sat all the while on one
side, and his report was peculiar and startling.
Jan. 30, 1852. Channing s lecture was full
of wise, acute, and witty observations, yet most
of the audience did not know but it was mere
incoherent and reckless verbiage and nonsense.
I lose my respect for people who do not know
what is good and true. I know full well that
readers and hearers, with the fewest exceptions,
ask me for my second best.
Jan. 29, 1854. A very cold morning. Mer
cury 18 below zero. Varro says arista, the
beard of grain, is so called because it dries first
(quod arescit prima), the grain, granum, is a
gerendo, for the object of planting is that this
may be borne. "But the spica or ear which
the rustics call speca, as they have received it
from their forefathers, seems to be named from
spe (hope), earn enim quod sperant fore, be
cause they hope that this will be hereafter."
Jan. 29, 1856. ... It is observable that not
only the moose and the wolf disappear before
286 . WINTER.
the civilized man, but even many species of in
sects, such as the black fly and the almost mi
croscopic " No-see-em." How imperfect a no
tion have we commonly of what was the actual
condition of the place where we dwell, three
centuries ago.
Jan. 29, 1858. P. M. To Great Meadows at
Copan. . . . Found some splendid fungi on old
aspens used for a fence ; quite firm, reddish
white above, and bright vermilion beneath, or
perhaps more scarlet, reflecting various shades
as it is turned. It is remarkable that the upper
side of the fungus, which must, as here, com
monly be low on decaying wood, so that we look
down on it, is not bright colored nor handsome,
and it was only when I had broken it off and
turned it over that I was surprised by its
brilliant color. This intense vermilion (?) face,
which would be known to every boy in the town
if it were turned upward, faces the earth, and
is discerned only by the curious naturalist. Its
ear is turned down listening to the honest
praises of the earth. It is like a light red vel
vet or damask. These silent and motionless
fungi with their ears turned ever downward to
the earth, revealing their bright color perchance
only to the prying naturalist who turns them
upward, remind me of the " Hear-all " of the
story.
WINTER. 287
Jan. 29, 1860. ... As usual, I now see, as
I walk on the river and river meadow ice, thinly
covered with the fresh snow, that conical rain
bow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections
from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow,
i. e., as I walk toward the sun, always a little
in advance of me, of course, the angle of re
flection being equal to that of incidence.
Jan. 30, 1841. ... The fashions of the wood
are more fluctuating than those of Paris. Snow,
rime, ice, green and dry leaves incessantly make
new patterns. There are all the shapes and
hues of the kaleidoscope, and the designs and
ciphers of books of heraldry, in the outlines of
the trees. Every time I see a nodding pine top,
it seems as if a new fashion of wearing plumes
had come into vogue. . . .
You glance up these paths, closely embraced
by bent trees, as through the side aisles of a
cathedral, and expect to hear a choir chanting
from their depths. You are never so far in
them as they are far before you. Their secret
is where you are not, and where your feet can
never carry you. . . .
Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching
a quarter of a mile across the pond. ... I am
curious to know what has determined its grace
ful curvatures, its greater or less spaces and dis
tinctness, and how surely they were coincident
288 WINTER.
with the fluctuations of some inind, why they
now lead me two steps to the right, and then
three to the left. If these things are not to be
called up and accounted for in the Lamb s Book
of Life, I shall set them down for careless ac
countants. Here was the expression of the
divine mind this morning. The pond was his
journal, and last night s snow made a tabula
rasa for him. I know which way a mind wended
this morning, what horizon it faced, by the set
ting of these tracks, whether it moved slowly or
rapidly, by the greater or less intervals and dis
tinctness, for the swiftest step leaves yet a last
ing trace. . . . Fair Haven pond is scored with
the trails of foxes, and you may see where they
have gamboled and gone through a hundred
evolutions, which testify to a singular listless-
ness and leisure in nature.
Suddenly looking down the river, I saw a fox
some sixty rods off making across the hills on
my left. As the snow lay five inches deep, he
made but slow progress, but it was no impedi
ment to me. So yielding to the instinct of the
chase, I tossed my head aloft, and bounded
away, snuffing the air like a fox-hound, and
spurning the world and human society at each
bound. It seemed the woods rang with the hun
ter s horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined
in the chase and cheered me on. Olympian and
WINTER. 289
Elean youths were waving palms on the hills. In
the meanwhile, I gained rapidly on the fox, but
he showed a remarkable presence of mind, for in
stead of keeping up the face of the hill, which was
steep and unwooded in that part, he kept along
the slope in the direction of the forest, though
he lost ground by it. Notwithstanding his
fright, he took no step which was not beautiful.
The course on his part was a series of most
graceful curves. It was a sort of leopard can
ter, I should say, as if he were nowise impeded
by the snow, but were husbanding his strength
all the while. When he doubled, I wheeled and
cut him off, bounding with fresh vigor, Antaeus-
like recovering my strength each time I touched
the snow. Having got near enough for a fair
view, just as he was slipping into the wood, I
gracefully yielded him the palm. He ran as if
there were not a bone in his back, occasionally
dropping his muzzle to the snow for a rod or two,
and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of
his course. When he came to a declivity, he
put his fore feet together, and slid down it like
a cat. He trod so softly that you could not
have heard from any nearness, and yet with
such expression that it would not have been
quite inaudible from any distance. So hoping
this experience would prove a useful lesson to
him, I returned to the village by the highway
of the river.
290 WINTER.
Jan. 30, 1852. I feel as if I were gradually
parting company with certain friends, just as
I perceive familiar objects successively disap
pear when I am leaving my native town in the
cars. . . .
After all, where is the flower lore? for the
first book, not the last, should contain the poetry
of flowers. The natural system may tell us the
value of a plant in medicine or the arts, or for
food, but neither it nor the Linnsean, to any
great extent, tells us its chief value and signifi
cance to man, what in any measure accounts for
its beauty, its flower-like properties. There will
be pages about some fair flower s qualities as
food or medicine, but perhaps not a sentence
about its significance to the eye (as if the cow
slip were better for greens than for yellows),
about what children and all flower-lovers gather
flowers for. [The book I refer to should be]
not addressed to the cook, or the physician, or
the dyer merely, but to the lovers of flowers
young and old, the most poetical of books in
which is breathed man s love of flowers.
Do nothing merely out of good resolutions.
Discipline yourself only to yield to love. Suffer
yourself to be attracted. It is in vain to write
on chosen themes. We must wait till they have
kindled a flame in our minds. There must be
the . . . generating force of love behind every
WINTER. 291
effort destined to be successful. The cold re
solve gives birth to, begets nothing. The theme
that seeks me, not I, it. The poet s relation to
his theme is the relation A of lovers. It is no
more to be courted. Obey, report.
Though they are cutting off the wood at Wai-
den, it is not all loss. It makes some new and
unexpected prospects. . . . As I stood on the
partially cleared bank at the E. end of the
pond, I looked S. over the side of the hill
into a deep dell, still wooded, and saw not more
than thirty rods off a chopper at his work. I was
half a dozen rods distant from the standing
wood, and I saw him through a vista between
two trees. He appeared to me charmingly dis
tinct as in a picture, of which the two trees were
the frame. He was seen against the snow on
the hillside beyond. I could distinguish each
part of his dress perfectly, and the axe with dis
tinct outline, as he raised it above his head, the
black iron against the snow. I could hear every
stroke distinctly. Yet I should have deemed it
ridiculous to call to him, he appeared so distant.
He appeared with the same distinctness as ob
jects seen through a pin hole in a card. This
was the effect rather than what would have been
by comparison of him, his size with the nearer
trees between which I saw him, and which made
the canopied roof of the grove far above his
292 WINTER.
head. It was, perhaps, one of those coincidences
and effects which have made men painters. I
could not behold him as an actual man. He
was more ideal than in any picture I have seen.
He refused to be seen as actual ; far in the hol
low, yet somewhat enlightened aisles of this
wooded dell. Some scenes will thus present
themselves as picture, . . . subjects for the pen
cil, . . . distinctly marked. They do not re
quire the aid of genius to idealize them. They
must be seen as ideal. . . .
I am afraid to travel much, or to famous
places, lest it might completely dissipate the
mind. Then I am sure that what we observe
at home, if we observe anything, is of more im
portance than what we observe abroad. The
far-fetched is of the least value. What we ob
serve in traveling are, to some extent, the acci
dents of the body ; what we observe when sitting
at home are, in the same proportion, phenomena
of the mind itself. A wakeful night will yield
as much thought as a long journey. If we try
thoughts by their quality, not their quantity, I
may find that a restless night will yield more
than the longest journey. . . .
It is remarkable that there is no man so
coarse and insensible but he can be profane, can
pronounce the word " God " with emphasis in
the woods when anything happens to disturb
WINTER. 293
him, as a spoiled child loves to see what liberties
he can presume to take. I am only astonished
that B should think it any daring, that he
should believe in God so much, look round to
see if his auditors appreciated his boldness.
Jan. 30, 1854. Another cold morning. 13
below zero. . . . This morning, though not so
cold by a degree or two as yesterday morning,
the cold has got more into the house. . . . The
sheets are frozen about the sleeper s face. The
teamster s beard is white with ice. Last night
I felt it stinging cold as I came up the street at
nine o clock. It bit my ears and face, but the
stars shone all the brighter. The windows are all
closed up with frost, as if they were of ground
glass. . . . The snow is dry and squeaks under
the feet, and the teams creak, as if they needed
greasing, sounds associated with extremely cold
weather.
p. M. Up river on ice and snow to Fair Ha
ven Pond. . . . We look at every track in the
snow. Every little while there is the track of a
fox, may be the same one, across the river, turn
ing aside sometimes to a muskrat s cabin or a
point of ice where he has left some traces, and
frequently the larger track of a hound which has
followed his trail. . . . This road is so wide
that you do not feel confined in it, and you never
meet travelers with whom you have no sym-
294 WINTER.
pathy. The winter, cold and bound out, as it is,
is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog,
and we are expected to get the marrow out of it.
While the milkmen in the outskirts are milking
so many scores of cows before sunrise these win
ter mornings, it is our task to milk the winter
itself. It is true it is like a cow that is dry, and
our fingers are numb, and there is none to wake
us up. Some desert the fields, and go into win
ter quarters in the city. They attend the ora
torios, while the only music we countrymen hear
is the squeaking of the snow under our boots.
But the winter was not given us for no purpose.
We must thaw its cold with our genialness.
We are tasked to find out and appropriate all
the nutriment it yields. If it is a cold and hard
season, its fruit no doubt is the more concen
trated and nutty. It took the cold and bleak
ness of November to ripen the walnut, but the
human brain is the kernel which the winter it
self matures. Not till then does its shell come
off. . . . Because the fruits of the earth are al
ready ripe, we are not to suppose there is no
fruit left for winter to ripen. . . . Then is the
great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought.
All previous harvests are stubble to this, mere
fodder and green crop. Our oil is winter-strained.
Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.
Shall we take refuge in cities in November ?
WINTER. 295
Shall the nut fall green from the tree ? Let not
the year be disappointed of its crop. I knew a
crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one
Sunday, and taking up a hymn book, remarked,
" We have had a good fall for getting in corn
and potatoes, let us sing Winter." So I say, " Let
us sing winter." What else can we sing, and
our voices be in harmony with the season. . . .
As we walked up the river, a little flock of
chickadees apparently flew to us from a wood-
side fifteen rods off, and uttered their lively day
day day, and followed us along a considerable
distance, flitting by our side on the button-
bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the
only, sociable bird we have.
Jan. 30, 1856. . . . What a difference be
tween life in the city and life in the country at
present ! between walking in Washington Street,
threading your way between countless sledges
and travelers over the discolored snow, and
crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow
surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue
shadows and your own are the only objects.
What a solemn silence reigns here !
Jan. 30, 1859. How peculiar is the hooting
of an owl ; not shrill and sharp like the scream
of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, wak
ing the echoes of the wood.
Jan. 30, 1860. 2 P. M. To Nut Meadow
296 ^WINTER.
and White Pond road. Thermometer +45.
Fair, with a few cumuli of indefinite outline in
the N. and S., and dusky under sides. A gentle
west wind and a blue haze. Thaws. . . . The
ice has so melted on the meadows that I see
where the muskrat has left his clamshells in a
heap near the river side where there was a hol
low in the bank. The small water-bugs are
gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook. It
is pleasant also to see the very distinct ripple
marks in the sand at the bottom, of late so rare
a sight. I go through the piny field N. W. of
Martial Miles s. There are no more beautiful
natural parks than these pastures in which the
white pines have sprung up spontaneously,
standing at handsome intervals, where the wind
chanced to let the seed lie at last, and the grass
and blackberry vines have not yet been killed
by them.
There are certain sounds invariably heard in
warm and thawing days in winter, such as the
crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and some
times the gobbling of turkeys. The crow, flying
high, touches the tympanum of the sky for us,
and reveals the tone of it. What does it avail
to look at a thermometer or barometer compared
with listening to his note ! He informs me that
nature is in the tenderest mood possible, and I
hear the very flutterings of her heart. Crows
WINTER. 297
have singularly wild and suspicious ways. You
will see a couple flying high, as if about their
business, but, lo, they turn and circle over your
head again and again for a mile, and this is
their business, as if a mile and an afternoon were
nothing for them to throw away ; this even in
winter when they have no nests to be anxious
about. But it is affecting to hear them cawing
about their ancient seat . . . which the choppers
are laying low. . . .
The snow flea seems to be a creature whose
summer and prime of life is a thaw in the win
ter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval
like other animals, but then chiefly to exist.
It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is
its element. That thaw which merely excites
the cock to sound his clarion, as it were, calls to
life the snow flea.
Jan. 31, 1852. ... I am repeatedly aston
ished by the coolness and obtuse bigotry with
which some will appropriate the New Testament
in conversation with you. It is as if they were
to appropriate the sun, and stand between you
and it, because they understood you had walked
once by moonlight, though that was in the re
flected light of the sun which you could not get
directly. I have seen two persons conversing at
a tea-table, both lovers of the New Testament,
each in his own way, the one a lover of all
298 WINTER.
kindred expression of truth also, and yet the
other appropriated the book wholly to herself,
and took it for granted with singular or rather
lamentable blindness and obtuseness that the
former neither knew nor cared anything about
it. Horace Greeley found some fault with me
to the world, because I presumed to speak of
the New Testament, using my own words and
thoughts, and challenged me to a controversy.
The one thought I had was that it would give
me real pleasure to know that he loved it as sin
cerely and intelligently as I did. . . .
That work of man s must be vast indeed
which, like the pyramids, looks blue in the hori
zon, as mountains. Few works of man rise high
enough, and with breadth enough to be blued by
the air between them and the spectator.
I hear my friend say, " I have lost my faith
in men, there are none true, magnanimous, holy,
etc., etc., meaning all the while that I do not
possess those unattainable virtues. But, worm
as I am, this is not wise in my friend, and I feel
simply discouraged, so far as my relation to him
is concerned. We must have infinite faith in
each other. . . . He erects his want of faith as
a barrier between us. When I hear a grown
man or woman say, " Once I had faith in men,
now I have not," I am inclined to ask, " Who
are you whom the world has disappointed?
WINTER. 299
Have not you rather disappointed the world ?
There is the same ground for faith now that
ever there was. It needs only a little love in
you who complain so, to ground it on." For
my own part, I am thankf uJ there are those who
come so near being my friends that they can be
estranged from me. I had faith before ; they
would destroy the little I have. The mason asks
but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from ;
man requires only an infinitely narrower one to
spring the arch of faith from. . . .
I am not sure that I have any right to address
to you the words I am about to write. The
reason I have not visited you oftener and more
earnestly is that I am offended by your pride,
your sometime assumption of dignity, your man
ners which come over me like waves of Lethe. I
know that if I stood in that relation to you which
you seem to ask, I should not be met. Per
haps I am wiser than you think. Do you never
for an instant treat me as a thing, flatter me ?
You treat me with politeness and I make myself
scarce. We have not sympathy enough, do not
always apprehend each other. You talk too, too
often, as if I were Mr. Tompkins of the firm
of , a retired merchant. If I had never
thought of you as a friend, I could make much
use of you as an acquaintance. . . .
The value of the pitch pine in winter is that
300 WINTER.
it holds the snow so finely. I see it now afar on
the hillsides decking itself with it, its whited
towers forming coverts where the rabbit and the
gray squirrel lurk. It makes the most cheerful
winter scenery, beheld from the window, you
know so well the nature of the coverts and the
sombre light it makes. The young oaks with
their red leaves, covering so many acres, are also
an indispensable feature of the winter landscape,
and the limbs of oak woods where some of the
trees have been cut off.
Jan. 31, 1854. p. M. To Great Meadows
and Beck Stow s. The wind is more southerly,
and now the warmth of the sun prevails and is
felt on the back. The snow softens and melts.
It is a beautiful, clear, and mild winter day. . . .
But I do not melt. There is no thaw in me. I
am bound out still. I see the tree sparrows
one or two at a time now and then all winter
uttering a faint note, with their bright chestnut
crown, and spot on breast, and barred wings.
They represent the sparrows in winter. . . .
In winter when there are no flowers, and leaves
are rare, even large buds are interesting and
somewhat exciting. I go a budding like a part
ridge. I am always attracted at this season by
the buds of the swamp pink, the poplars, and
the sweet gale. . . .
We too have our thaws. They come to our
WINTER. 301
January moods, when our ice cracks, and our
sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen
up under stern experience gushes forth in feel
ing and expression, This is a freshet which
carries away dams of accumulated ice. Our
thoughts hide unexpressed like the buds under
the downy or resinous scales. They would
hardly keep a partridge from starving. If you
would know what are my winter thoughts look
in the partridge s crop. They are like the
laurel buds, some leaf, some blossom buds, which,
though food for such indigenous creatures, will
not expand into leaves and flowers until summer
comes.
Jan. 31, 1855. A clear, cool, beautiful day;
fine skating ; an unprecedented expanse of ice.
At 10 A. M. skated up the river to explore far
ther than I had been. . . . The country almost
completely bare of snow, only some ice in the
roads and fields, and the frozen freshet at this
remarkable height. I skated up as far as the
boundary between Wayland and Sudbury, just
above Pelham s Pond, about twelve miles, be
tween 10 A. M. and 1, quite leisurely. There I
found the river open unexpectedly, as if there
were a rapid there, and as I walked three
quarters of a mile farther, it was still open be
fore me. . . . All the way I skated there was a
chain of meadows, with the muskrat houses still
302 WINTER.
rising above the ice, commonly on the bank of
the river, and marking it like smaller haycocks
amid the large ones still left. As I skated
near the shore under Lee s Cliff, I saw what I
took to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a
dead limb, lying on the bank beneath a white
oak, close by me. Yet while I looked closely at
them, I could not but admire their close resem
blance to partridges. I had come along with a
rapid whir, and suddenly halted right against
them, only two rods distant, and as my eyes
watered a little from skating against the wind,
I was not convinced they were birds, till I had
pulled out my glass and deliberately examined
them. They sat and stood, three of them, per
fectly still, with their heads erect, some darker
feathers, like ears methinks, increasing their re
semblance to scrags, as where a small limb is
broken off. I was much surprised at the re
markable stillness they preserved, instinctively
relying on their resemblance to the ground for
their protection, i. e., withered grass, dry oak
leaves, dead scrags, and broken twigs. . . . For
some time after I had noted their resemblance
to birds, standing only two rods off, I could not
be sure of their character on account of their
perfect motionlessness, and it was not till I
brought my glass to bear on them, and distinctly
saw their eyes steadily glaring on me and their
WINTER. 303
necks and every muscle tense with anxiety, that I
was convinced. At length, on some signal which
I did ^not perceive, they went with a whir, as if
off, over the bushes.
Feb. 1, 1852. When I hear that a friend
on whom I relied has spoken of me, not with
cold words, perhaps, but even with a cold and
indifferent tone, to another, ah ! what treachery
I feel it to be ! the crime of all crimes against
humanity. My friend may cherish a thousand
suspicions against me, and they may but repre
sent his faith and expectation, till he cherishes
them so heartlessly that he can speak of thern^
If I have not succeeded in my friendshipgfit
was because I demanded more of them, and
did not put up with what I could get ; and I
got no more, partly because I gave so little. I
be dumb to those who do not, as I believe,
preciate my actions, not knowing the springs
of them.
While we preach obedience to human laws,
and to that portion of the divine laws set forth
in the New Testament, the natural laws of
genius, of love and friendship, we do not preach
nor insist upon. How many a seeming heart-
lessness is to be explained by the very abun
dance of the heart. How much of seeming
recklessness, even selfishness, is to be explained
by obedience to this code of the divine laws.
304 WINTER.
It is evident that as buyers and sellers we obey
a very different law from what we do as lovers
and friends. The Hindoo is not to be tried in
all things by the Christian standard, nor the
Christian by the Hindoo. How much fidelity
to law of a kind not commonly recognized, how
much magnanimity even may be thrown away
on mankind, is like pearls cast before swine !
The hero obeys his own law, the Christian, his,
the lover and friend, theirs: they are to some
extent different codes. What incessant tragedy
between men when one silently obeys the code
of friendship, the other, the code of philan
thropy, in their dealings with one another. As
our constitutions and geniuses are different, so
are our standards, and we are amenable to dif
ferent codes. My neighbor asks me in vain to
be good as he is good; I must be good as I am
made to be good, whether I am heathen or
Christian. Every man s laws are hard enough
to obey. The Christian falls as far short of
obeying the heathen moral law as the heathen
does. One of little faith looks for his rewards
and punishments to the next world, and, de
spairing of this world, behaves accordingly in it ;
another thinks the present a worthy occasion
and arena, sacrifices to it, and expects to hear
sympathizing voices. The man who believes in
another world and not in this is wont to put me
WINTER. 305
off with Christianity. The present world in
which we talk is of a little less value to him
than the next world. So we are said to hope in
proportion as we do not realize. It is all hope
deferred. But one grain of realization, of in
stant life on which we stand, is equivalent to
acres of the leaf of hope hammered out to gild
our prospect. The former so qualifies the vis
ion that it gilds all we look upon with the splen
dor of truth. We must meet the hero on
heroic grounds. Some tribes inhabit the moun
tains. Some dwell on the plains. We discour
age one another. We obey different laws.
My friends ! my friends ! It does not cheer
me to see them. They but express their want
of faith in me or in mankind. Their coldest,
cruellest thought comes clothed in polite and
easy spoken words at last. I am silent to their
in citations, because I do not feel invited, and we
have no reasons to give for what we do not do.
One says, " Love me out of this mire." The
other says, " Come out of it and be lovely."
Feb. 1, 1855. As I skated up the river yes
terday, now here, now there, past the old king
doms of my fancy, I was reminded of Lan-
dor s Richard the First. " I sailed along the
realms of my family ; on the right was England,
on the left was France [on the right was Sud-
bury, on the left was Wayland ] ; little else
306 WINTER.
could I discover than sterile eminences and ex
tensive shoals. They fled behind me ; so pass
away generations; so shift and sink, and die
away affections." " I debark in Sicily." [That
was Tail s Island.] " I sail again, and within a
day or two [hour or two] I behold, as the sun is
setting, the solitary majesty of Crete [that was
Nobscot surely], mother of a religion, it is said,
that lived two thousand years. Onward, and
many specks bubble up along the blue ^Egean."
These must have been the muskrat houses in
the meadows. " Every one," I have no doubt,
" the monument of a greater man [being ?] than
I am." The swelling river was belching on a
high key from ten to eleven, quite a musical
cracking, running like chain lightning of sound
athwart my course. ... As I passed, the ice
forced up by the water on one side suddenly
settled on another with a crash, and quite a lake
was formed above the ice behind me, so that my
successor two hours after, to his wonder and
alarm, saw my tracks disappear on one side of
it and come out on the other. My seat from
time to time is the springy horizontal bough of
some fallen tree which is frozen into the ice, some
old maple that was blown over and retained some
life a year after, in the water, covered with the
great shaggy perforate parmelia. Lying flat
I quench my thirst where the ice is melted
WINTER. 307
about it, blowing aside the snow fleas. The
great arundo in the Sudbury meadows was all
level with the ice. There was a great bay of ice
stretching up the Pantry, and up Larned Brook.
I looked up a broad, glaring bay of ice at the
last place which seemed to reach to the base of
Nobscot and almost to the horizon. Some dead
maple or oak saplings laid side by side made my
bridges, by which I got on to the ice along the
watery shore. It was a problem to get off, and
another to get on, dry shod.
Feb. 1, 1857. 3 P. M. Down railroad. Ther
mometer at-j-42. Warm as it is, I see a large
flock of snow buntings on the railroad cause
way. Their wings are white above, next the
body, but black or dark beyond, and on the
back. This produces that regular black and
white effect when they fly past you.
Feb. 1, 1858. Measured Gowing s swamp
two and one half rods N. E. of the middle of
the hole, *. e., in the andromeda and sphagnum
near its edge, where I stand in the summer ;
also five rods N. E. of the middle of the open
hole, or in the midst of the andromeda. In
both these places the pole went hard at first,
but broke through a crust of roots and sphag
num at about three feet beneath the surface,
and I then easily pushed it down just twenty
feet. This being a small pole, I could not push
308 WINTER.
it any farther, holding it by the small end. It
bent then. With a longer and stiffer pole, I
could probably have fathomed thirty feet. It
seems then that there is over this andromeda
swamp a crust about three feet thick of sphag
num, andromeda calyculata and polifolia, and
kalinia glauca, beneath which there is almost
clear water, and under that an exceedingly thin
mud. There can be no soil above the mud, and
yet there are three or four larch trees three feet
high or more between these holes, or over ex
actly the same water, and small spruce trees
near by. For aught that appears, the swamp is
as deep under the andromedas as in the middle.
The two andromedas and the kalmia glauca may
be more truly said to grow in water than in soil
there. When the surface of a swamp shakes for
a rod around you, you may conclude that it is a
network of roots two or three feet thick resting
on water or very thin mud. The surface of that
swamp, composed in great part of sphagnum, is
really floating. It evidently begins with sphag
num which floats on the surface of clear water,
and accumulating, at length affords a basis for
that large-seeded sedge (?), andromeda, etc. The
filling up of a swamp then, in this case at least,
is not the result of a deposition of vegetable
matter washed into it, settling to the bottom,
and leaving the surface clear, so filling it up from
WINTER. 30&
the bottom to the top. But the vegetation first
extends itself over it in a film which gradually
thickens till it supports shrubs, and completely
conceals the water. The under part of this
crust drops to the bottom, so that it is filled up
first at the top and bottom, and the middle part
is the last to be reclaimed from the water. Per
haps this swamp is in the process of becoming
peat. It has been partially drained by a ditch.
I fathomed also two rods within the edge of
the blueberry bushes, in the path, but I could
not force a pole down more than eight feet five
inches, so it is much more solid there, and the
blueberry bushes require a firmer soil than the
water andromeda. This is a regular quag OP
shaking surface, and in this way evidently float
ing islands are formed. I am not sure but that
meadow, with all its bushes in it, would float a
man-of-war.
Feb. 2, 1841. It is easy to repeat, but hard
to originate. Nature is readily made to repeat
herself in a thousand forms, and, in the daguerre
otype, her own light is amanuensis. The pic
ture, too, has more than a surface significance,
a depth equal to the prospect, so that the micro
scope may be applied to the one, as the spy
glass to the other. Thus we may easily multi
ply the forms of the outward, but to give the
within outwardness, that is not easy.
310 WINTER.
That an impression may be taken, perfect
stillness, though but for an instant, is necessary.
There is something analogous in the birth of all
rhymes.
Our sympathy is a gift whose value we can
never know, nor when we impart it. The in
stant of communion is when, for the least point
of time, we cease to oscillate and coincide in rest,
by as fine a point as a star pierces the firma
ment. . . .
There is always a single ear in the audience
to which we address ourselves.
How much does it concern you, the good
opinion of your friend! Therein is the meas
ure of fame. For the herd of men multiplied
many times will never come up to the value of
one friend. In this society there is no fame but
love, for as our name may be on the lips of men,
so are we in each other s hearts. There is no
ambition but virtue, for why should we go round
about who may go direct ?/<
For our aspirations there is no expression as
yet, but if we obey steadily, by another year we
shall have learned the language of last year s
aspirations. . . .
/ Weight has something very imposing in it,
/ for we cannot get rid of it. Once in the scales
we must weigh. And are we not always in the
scales, and weighing just our due, though we
WINTER. 311
kick the beam, and do all ^e can to make our
selves heavier or lighter^
Feb. 2, 1853. Th&SBtellaria media [common
chickweed] is full of frost-bitten blossoms con
taining stamens, etc., still, and half -grown buds.
Apparently it never rests.
Feb. 2, 1854. Up river on ice to Clematis
Brook. Another warm, melting day, like yester
day. You can see some softening and relenting
in the sky. Apparently the vapor in the air
makes a grosser atmosphere more like that of a
summer eve. We go up the Corner road and
take the ice at Potter s meadow. The Cliff
Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you
hear the rush of melted snow down its side in
one place. Here and there are regular round
holes in the ice over the meadow two or three
feet in diameter where the water appears to
be warmer, and where are springs, perchance.
Therein in shallow water is seen the cress and
one or two other plants still quite fresh. The
shade of pines on the snow is in some lights
quite blue. We stopped a while under Bittern
Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm.
There are a few greenish radical leaves to be
seen, primrose, Johnswort, strawberry, etc., and
spleen wort still green in the clefts. These
sunny old gray rocks completely covered with
white and gray lichens, and overrun with ivy,
312 WINTER.
are a very cozy place. You hardly detect the
melted snow swiftly trickling down them, until
you feel the drops on your cheek. The winter
gnat is seen in the air before the rocks. In
their clefts are the latebrae of many insects,
spiders, etc. . . .
The ice is eighteen inches thick on Fair
Haven. Saw some pickerel just caught there
with a fine lustre on them. Went to the pond
in the woods which has an old ditch dug from it
near Clematis Brook. The red twigs of the
cornel and the yellow ones of the sallows sur
rounding it are interesting at this season. We
prize the least color now. As it is a melting
day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow
fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the
pond and meadows.
The scream of the jay is a true winter sound.
It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony
with winter. I stole up within five or six rods
of a pitch pine behind which a downy wood
pecker was pecking. From time to time he
hopped round to the side towards me, and ob
served me without fear. They are very confident
birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the
other side of the bough from you, perhaps.
Already we begin to anticipate spring, to say
that the day is spring-like. This is an important
difference between this time and a month ago.
WINTER. 313
Is not January the hardest month to get
through? When you have weathered that, you
get into the gulf stream of winter, nearer the
shores of spring.
Feb. 2, 1855. . . . This last half inch of
snow which fell in the night is just enough to
track animals on the ice by. All about the
Hill and Rock I see the tracks of rabbits which
have run back and forth close to the shore re
peatedly since the night. In the case of the
rabbit, the fore feet are farther apart than the
hind ones, the first, four or five inches to the
stride, the last, two or three. They are gener
ally not quite regular, but one of the fore feet a
little in advance of the other, and so with the
hind feet. There is an interval of about sixteen
inches between each four tracks. Sometimes
they are in a curve or crescent, all touching.
I saw what must have been a muskrat s or
mink s track, I think, since it came out of the
water ; the tracks roundish, and toes much rayed
four or five inches apart on the trail, with only
a trifle more between the fore and hind legs,
and the mark of the tail in successive curves as
it struck the ice. Another track puzzled me,
as if a hare had been running like a dog
( . * . . eighteen inches apart), and
touched its tail, if it had one. This in several
places.
314 WINTER.
Feb. 2, 1858. ... As I return from the post-
office I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song
sparrow, ... and see him perched 011 the top
most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn,
and drabbled, and solitary in the rain.
Feb. 2, 1860. 6 at about 8 A. M. . . . 2 p. M.
to Fair Haven Pond. The river, which was
breaking up, is frozen over again. The new ice
over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is cov
ered with handsome rosettes two or three inches
in diameter where the vapor which rose through
froze and crystallized. This new ice for forty
rods together is thickly covered with these
rosettes, often as thick as snow, an inch deep.
. . . The frozen breath of the river at a myriad
breathing holes. . . .
It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge
of the meadows, which in the fall is one of the
least noticeable colors, should now, that the land
scape is mostly covered with snow, be perhaps
the most noticeable of all objects in it for
its color, and an agreeable contrast to the
snow. . . .
I see where some meadow mouse (if not mole)
just came to the surface of the snow, enough
to break it with his back for three or four
inches, then put his head out, and at once
withdrew it.
We walked as usual in the fresh track of a
WINTER. 315
fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark
of two toe-nails in front separate from the track
of the foot in very thin snow. As we were kin
dling a fire on the pond by the side of the
island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the
river. He was busily examining along the sides
of the pond by the button - bushes and wil
lows, smelling in the snow. Not appearing to
regard us much, he slowly explored along the
shore of the pond thus half way round it ; at
Pleasant Meadow evidently looking for mice (or
moles ?) in the grass of the bank, smelling in
the shallow snow there, amid the stubble, often
retracing his steps, and pausing at particular
spots. He was eagerly searching for food, intent
on finding some mouse to help fill his empty
stomach. He had a blackish tail and blackish
feet, looked lean, and stood high. The tail
peculiarly large for any creature to carry round.
He stepped daintily about, softly, and is more
to the manor born than a dog. It was a very
arctic scene this cold day, and I suppose he
would hardly have ventured out in a warm one.
The fox seems to get his living by industry
and perseverance. He runs smelling for miles
along the most favorable routes, especially the
edge of rivers and ponds, till he smells the track
of a mouse beneath the snow, or the fresh track
of a partridge, and then follows it till he comes
316 WINTER.
upon his game. . . . There may be a dozen
partridges resting in the snow within a square
mile, and his work is simply to find them with
the end of his nose. Compared with the dog
he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is
nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to
a noble family which has seen its best days, a
younger son. Now and then he starts, and
turns, and doubles on his track, as if he heard
or scented danger. (I watch him through my
glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of
only sixty rods. I have myself seen to-day one
place where a mouse came to the surface in the
snow. Probably he has smelled out many such
galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the
snow. I had a transient vision of one mouse
this winter, and that the first for a number of
years.
Feb. 3, 1841. The present seems never to get
its due. It is the least obvious, neither before
nor behind, but within us. All the past plays
into this moment, and we are what we are. My
aspiration is one thing, my reflection, another ;
but, over all, myself and condition is and
does. To men and nature I am each moment
a finished tool, a spade, a barrow, a pickaxe.
This immense promise is no efficient quality.
For all practical purposes I am done. . . .
We are constantly invited to be what we are,
WINTER. 317
as to something worthy and noble. I never
waited but for myself to come round ; none ever
detained me, but I lagged or staggered after
myself.
It steads us to be as true to children and
boors, as to God himself. It is the only atti
tude which will meet all occasions. It only will
make the earth yield her increase, and by it
do we effectually expostulate with the wind.
If I run against a post, this is the remedy.
I would meet the morning and evening on
very sincere ground. When the sun introduces
me to a new day, I silently say to myself, "Let
us be faithful all round. We will do justice
and receive it." Something like this is the
secret charm of Nature s demeanor towards us,
strict conscientiousness, and disregard of us
when we have ceased to have regard for our
selves. So she can never offend us. How true
she is, and never swerves. In her most genial
moment, her laws are as steadfastly and relent
lessly fulfilled (though the decalogue is rhymed
and set to sweetest music), as in her sternest.
Any exhibition of affection, as an inadvertent
word, or act, or look, seems premature, as if the
time were not ripe for it, like the buds which
the warm days near the end of winter cause to
push out and unfold before the frosts are yet
gone.
318 WINTER.
My life must seem as if it were passing on a
higher level than that which I occupy. It must
possess a dignity which will not allow me to be
familiar.
Feb. 3, 1852. When I review the list of my
acquaintances from the most impartial point of
view, and consider each one s excesses and de
fects of character which are the subject of
mutual ridicule and astonishment and pity (and
I class myself among them), I cannot help ask
ing myself, " If this is the sane world, what
must a mad-house be ? " It is only by a certain
flattery, and an ignoring of their faults, that
even the best are made available for society.
I have been to the libraries (yesterday) at
Cambridge and Boston. It would seem as if
all things compelled us to originality. How
happens it that I find not in the country, in the
fields and woods, the works even of like-minded
naturalists and poets. Those who have ex
pressed the purest and deepest love of nature
have not recorded it on the bark of the trees
with the lichens, they have left no memento of
it there ; but if I would read their books, I must
go to the city, so strange and repulsive both to
them and to me, and deal with men and institu
tions with whom I have no sympathy. When I
have just been there on this errand, it seems too
great a price to pay even for access to the works
WINTER. 319
of Homer or Chaucer or Linnaeus. Greece and
Asia Minor should henceforth bear Iliads and
Odysseys, as their trees lichens. But, no; if
the works of nature are, to any extent, collected
in the forest, the works of men are, to a still
greater extent, collected in the city. I have
sometimes imagined a library, i. e., a collection
of the works of true poets, philosophers, natu
ralists, etc., deposited not in a brick or marble
edifice in a crowded and dusty city, guarded by
cold-blooded and methodical officials, and preyed
on by bookworms, in which you own no share,
and are not likely to, but rather far away in the
depths of a primitive forest, like the ruins of
Central America, where you could trace a series
of crumbling alcoves, the older books protecting
the more modern from the elements, partially
buried by the luxuriance of nature, which the
heroic student could only reach after adventures
in the wilderness amid wild beasts and wild
men. That, to my imagination, seems a fitter
place for these interesting relics which owe no
small part of their interest to their antiquity,
and whose occasion is nature, than the well-pre
served edifice, with its well-preserved officials, on
the side of a city s square. More terrible than
lions and tigers, these libraries. Access to na
ture for original observation is secured by one
ticket, by one kind of expense ; but access to the
320 WINTER.
works of your predecessors, by a very different
kind of expense. All things tend to cherish the
originality of the original. Nature, at least,
takes no pains to introduce him to the works of
his predecessors, but only presents him with her
own opera omnia. Is it the lover of nature who
has access to all that has been written on the
subject of his favorite studies ? No ; he lives
far away from this. It is the lover of books
and systems who knows nature chiefly at second
hand. . . .
About 6 P. M. walked to Cliffs via railroad.
Snow quite deep. The sun had set without a
cloud in the sky ; a rare occurrence, but I missed
the clouds which make the glory of evening. The
sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few
moods ; nor is the evening less serene for them.
There is only a tinge of red along the horizon.
The moon is nearly full to-night, and the moment
is passed when the light in the east (i. e., of the
moon) balances the light in the west. . . . It is
perfectly still, and not very cold. The shadows
of the trees on the snow are more minutely dis
tinct than at any other season, not dark masses
merely, but finely reticulated, each limb and twig
represented, as cannot be in summer both from
the leaves and the inequality and darkness of
the ground. ... I hear my old acquaintance,
the owl, from the causeway. The reflector of
WINTER. 321
the cars, as I stand over the Deep Cut, makes a
large and dazzling light in this air, . . . and
now whizzes the boiling, sizzling kettle by me,
in which the passengers make me think of pota
toes which a fork would show to be done by this
time. The steam is denser for the cold, and
more white ; like the purest downy clouds in the
summer sky its volumes roll up between me and
the moon, and far behind, when the cars are a
mile off, it still goes shading the fields with its
wreaths, the breath of the panting traveler. I
now cross from the railroad to the road. This
snow, the last of which fell day before yesterday,
is two feet deep, pure and powdery. . . . From
a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is re
flected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its
surface. I hear a gentle rustling of the oak
leaves as I go through the woods, but this snow
has yet no troops of leaves on its surface The
snow evidently by its smooth crust assists in the
more equal dispersion and distribution of the
leaves which course over it, blown by the wind.
Perchance, for this reason, the oak leaves and
some others hang on. ...
[On Fair Haven Hill.] Instead of the sound
of his [the chopper s] axe, I hear the hooting of
an owl, nocturnus ululatus, whose haunts he is
laying waste. The ground is all pure white,
powdery snow, which his sled, etc., has stirred
322 WINTER.
up, except the scattered twigs and pine plumes.
I can see every track distinctly where the team
ster drove his oxen and loaded his sled, and
even the tracks of his dog, in the moonlight, and
plainly to write this. The moonlight now is
very splendid in the untouched pine woods above
the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light.
The light has almost the brightness of sunlight,
the fulgor. The stems of the trees are more
obvious than by day, being simple black against
the moonlight and the snow. The sough of the
breeze in the pine tops sounds far away like the
surf on a distant shore, and for all sound be
side, there is only the rattling or chafing of little
dry twigs, perchance a little snow falling on
them, or they are so brittle that they break and
fall with the motion of the trees. My owl
sounds hoo-hoo-hoo hoo.
The landscape covered with snow seen from
these Cliffs, encased in snowy armor two feet
thick, gleaming in the moonlight and of spotless
white, who can believe that this is the habitable
globe. The scenery is wholly arctic. Fair Ha
ven Pond is a Baffin s Bay. Man must have
ascertained the limits of the winter before he
ventured to withstand it, and not migrate with
the birds. No cultivated field, no house, no
candle. All is as dreary as the shores of the
frozen ocean. I can tell where there is wood
WINTER. 323
and where open land for many miles in the hori
zon by the darkness of the former and whiteness
of the latter. ... It looks as if the snow and
ice of the arctic world, traveling like a glacier,
had crept down southward and overwhelmed
New England. See if a man can think his sum
mer thoughts now. But the evening star is
preparing to set, and I will return, floundering
through snow, sometimes up to my middle. . . .
The forcible writer stands bodily behind his
words with his experience. He does not make
books out of books, but he has been there in
person. . . .
That is a good mythological incident told of
the wounded farmer who, his foot being lacer
ated and held fast between his plow and a
fallen tree in a forest clearing, drew his oxen to
him with difficulty, smeared their horns with
blood which the mosquitoes had drawn from his
bare arms, and cutting the reins, sent them home
as an advertisement to his family.
Feb. 3, 1854. . . . Varro speaks of two
kinds of pigeons, one of which was wont to
alight on the ( Columinibus villce) columns of a
villa (a quo appellatoa columbce), from which
they were called " Columbce-" These, on ac
count of their natural timidity (summa loca in
tectis captant), delight in the highest places on
the roofs (or under cover) ?
324 WINTER.
Feb. 3, 1855. . . . Skated up the river with
T n in spite of the snow and wind. . . .
We went up the Pantry meadow . . . and came
down . . . again with the wind and snow dust,
spreading our coat tails, like birds, though some
what at the risk of our necks, if we had struck
a foul place. I found that I could sail on a
tack pretty well, trimming with my skirts.
Sometimes we had to jump suddenly over some
obstacle, which the snow had concealed, to save
our necks. It was worth the while for one to
look back against the sun and wind, and see the
other sixty rods off, . . . floating down like a
graceful demon in the midst of the broad
meadow, all covered and lit with the curling
snow steam, between which you saw the ice in
dark, waving streaks, like a mighty river
Orellana braided of a myriad steaming cur
rents ; like the demon of the storm driving his
flocks and herds before him. In the midst of
this tide of curling snow steam, he sweeps and
surges this way and that, and comes on like the
spirit of the whirlwind. At Lee s Cliff we made
a fire, kindling with white pine cones, after oak
leaves and twigs, else we had lost it. The cones
saved us, for there is a resinous drop at the
point of each scale. There we forgot that we
were out doors in a blustering winter day. Flash
go your dry leaves like powder, and leave a few
WINTER. 325
bare and smoking twigs. Then you sedulously
feed a little flame until the fire takes hold of
the solid wood and establishes itself. What an
uncertain and negative thing is fire when it
finds nothing to suit its appetite after the first
flash. What a positive and inexpugnable thing,
when it begins to devour the solid wood with a
relish, burning with its own wind. You must
think as long at last how to put it out as you
did how to kindle it. Close up under some
upright rock where you scorch the yellow sul
phur lichens. Then cast on some creeping juni
per wreaths or hemlock boughs to hear them
crackle, realizing scripture.
Some little boys ten years old are as hand
some skaters as I know. They sweep along
with a graceful, floating motion, leaning now to
this side, then to that, like a marsh hawk beat
ing the bush. . . .
I still recur in my mind to that skating tour
of the 31st. I was thus, enabled to get a bird s-
eye view of the river, to survey its length and
breadth within a few hours, connect one part
or shore with another in my mind, and realize
what was going on upon it from end to end, to
know the whole, as I ordinarily knew a few
miles of it only. I connected the chestnut-tree
house near the shore in W r ayland with the chim
ney house in Billerica, Pelham s Pond with
326 WINTER.
Nutting s Pond in Billerica. There is good
skating from the mouth to Saxon ville, measure-
ing in a straight line some twenty -two miles,, by
the river say thirty now. It is all the way of
one character, a meadow river, or dead stream.
Musketicook, the abode of muskrats, pickerel,
etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way,
or thirty in all, by some twenty low wooden
bridges, sublicii ponies, connected with the
mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the
long shallow lakes are divided into reaches.
These long causeways all under water and ice
now, only the bridges peeping out from time to
time, like a dry eyelid. You must look close to
find them in many cases, mere islands are they
to the traveler in this waste of water and ice.
Only two villages lying near the river, Concord
and Way land, and one at each end of this thirty
miles. ... I used some bits of wood with a
groove in them for crossing the causeways and
gravelly places, that I might not scratch my
skate irons.
Feb. 3, 1856. ... p. M. Up North Branch.
A strong N. W. wind (and thermometer 11)
driving the snow like steam. About five inches
of soft snow now on ice. . . . Returning, saw
near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blus
tering as it was, with a remarkably even and
steady sail or gliding motion, like a hawk, eight
WINTER. 327
or ten feet above the ground, and alight on a
tree from which, at the same instant, a small
bird, perhaps a creeper or nuthatch, flitted tim
idly away. The shrike was apparently in pur
suit.
We go wading through snow now up the
bleak river, in the face of a cutting N. W. wind
and driving snow-storm, turning now this ear,
now that, to the wind, our gloved hands in our
bosoms or our pockets. How different this from
sailing or paddling up the stream here in July,
or poling amid the rocks ! Yet still, in one
square rod where they have got out ice and a
thin transparent covering has formed, I can
see the pebbly bottom as in summer.
There comes a deep snow in midwinter cover
ing up the ordinary food of many birds and
quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the
seeds of pines, hemlocks, birches, alders, etc., far
and wide over the surface of the snow, for them.
You may now observe plainly the habit of the
rabbits to run in paths about the swamps.
Mr. Emerson, who returned last week from
lecturing, on the Mississippi, having been gone
but a month, tells me that he saw boys skating
on the Mississippi, and on Lake Erie, and on
the Hudson, and has no doubt they are skating
on Lake Superior. Probably at Boston he might
have seen them skating on the Atlantic.
328 WINTER.
In Barber s u Historical Collections," p. 476,
there is a letter by Cotton Mather dated " Bos
ton, 10th Dec., 1717," describing the great snow
of the preceding February, from which I quote :
" On the twentieth of the last February there
came on a snow, which being added unto what
had covered the ground a few days before, made
a thicker mantle for our mother than what was
usual. And the storm with it was, for the fol
lowing day, so violent as to make all communi
cation between the neighbors everywhere to
cease. People, foi some hours, could not pass
from one side of a street to another."
" On the twenty-fourth day of the month
came Pelion upon Ossa. Another snow came
on, which almost buried the memory of the for
mer, with a storm so famous that Heaven laid
an interdict on the religious assemblies through
out the country on the Lord s day, the like
whereunto had never been seen before. The
Indians near an hundred years old affirm that
their fathers never told them of anything that
equaled it. Vast numbers of cattle were de
stroyed in this calamity, whereof some there
were of the stranger [stronger ?] sort, were
found standing dead on their legs, as if they
had been alive, many weeks after when the
snow melted away. And others had their eyes
glazed over with ice at such a rate, that being
WINTER. 329
not far from the sea, their mistake of their way
drowned them there. One gentleman on whose
farms were lost above eleven hundred sheep,
which with other cattle, were interred (shall I
say) or innived in the snow, writes me word
that there were two sheep very singularly cir
cumstanced. For, no less than eight and twenty
days after the storm, the people pulling out the
ruins of above ah hundred sheep out of a snow
bank which lay sixteen foot high drifted over
them, there was two found alive which had been
there all this time, and kept themselves alive by
eating the wool of their dead companions. When
they were taken out, they shed their own fleeces,
but soon got into good case again."
" A man had a couple of young hogs which
he gave over for dead, but on the twenty-seventh
day after their burial, they made their way out
of a snow bank, at the bottom of which they
had found a little tansy to feed upon." " Hens
were found alive after seven days ; turkeys
were found alive after five and twenty days,
buried in the snow, and at a distance from the
ground, and altogether destitute of anything to
feed them." " The wild creatures of the woods,
[at] the outgoing of the evening, made their
descent as well as they could in this time of
scarcity for them, towards the sea-side. A vast
multitude of deer, for the same cause, taking
330 WINTER.
the same course, and the deep snow spoiling
them of their only defense, which is to run, they
became such a prey to these devourers that it is
thought not one in twenty escaped." " It
is incredible how much damage is done to the or
chards, for the snow freezing to a crust as high as
the bows of the trees, anon split them to pieces.
The cattle, also, walking on the crusted snow
a dozen feet from the ground, so fed upon the
trees as very much to damnify them." " Cot
tages were totally covered with the snow, and
not the very tops of their chimneys to be seen."
These " odd accidents," he says, " would afford
a story. But there not being any relation to
Philosophy in them, I forbear them." He little
thought that his simple testimony to such facts
as the above would be worth all the philosophy
he might dream of.
Feb. 3, 1857. To Fitchburg to lecture.
Though the snow was not deep, I noticed that
an unbroken snow crust stretched around Fitch-
burg ; and its several thousand inhabitants had
been confined so long to the narrow streets, some
of them a track only six feet wide. Hardly one
individual had anywhere departed from this nar
row walk, and struck out into the surrounding
fields and hills. If I had had my cowhide
boots, I should not have confined myself to those
narrow limits, but have climbed some of the hills.
WINTER. 331
It is surprising to go into a N. E. town in mid
winter and find its five thousand inhabitants all
living thus on the limits, confined at most to
their narrow moose-yard in the snow. Scarcely
here and there has a citizen stepped aside one
foot to let a sled pass. And about as circum
scribed is their summer life, going out from house
to shop, and back to house again. If, Indian-
like, one examined the dew or beaded grass, he
would be surprised to discover how little trod
den or frequented the surrounding fields were.
... It is as if some vigilance committee had
given notice that if any should transgress these
narrow limits, he should be outlawed and his
blood should be upon his own head.
Feb. 3, 1858. ... I do not see this year, and
I do not know that I ever have seen, any un
seasonable swelling of the buds of indigenous
plants in mild winters.
Feb. 3, 1859. Five minutes before 3 P. M.
father died. ... I have touched a body which
was flexible and warm, yet tenantless warmed
by what fire ? When the spirit that animated
some matter has left it, who else, what else, can
animate it?
How enduring are our bodies after all ! The
forms of our brothers and sisters, our parents
and children and wives, lie still in the hills and
fields round about us, not to mention those of
332 WINTER.
our remoter ancestors, and the matter which
composed the body of our first human father
still exists under another name.
When in sickness the body is emaciated, and
the expression of the face in various ways is
changed, you perceive unexpected resemblances
to other members of the same family, as if within
the same family there was a greater general
similarity in the framework of the face than in
its filling up and clothing. . . .
Some have spoken slightingly of the Indians,
as a race possessing so little skill and wit, so
low in the scale of humanity, and so brutish
that they hardly deserved to be remembered,
using only the terms, miserable, wretched, piti
ful, and the like. In writing their histories of
this country, they have so hastily disposed of
this refuse of humanity (as they might have
called it), which littered and defiled the shore
and the interior. But even the indigenous ani
mals are inexhaustibly interesting to us. How
much more then the indigenous men of Amer
ica ! If wild men, so much more like ourselves
than they are unlike, have inhabited these shores
before us, we wish to know particularly what
manner of men they were, how they lived here,
their relation to nature, their arts and their cus
toms, their fancies and superstitions. They
paddled over these waters, they wandered in
WINTER. 333
these woods, and they had their fancies and be
liefs connected with the sea and the forest,
which concern us quite as much as the fables of
Oriental nations do. It frequently happens that
the historian, though he professes more human
ity than the trapper, the mountain man, or gold
digger, who shoots one as a wild beast, in reality
exhibits and practices a similar inhumanity to
his, wielding a pen instead of a rifle. One
tells you with more contempt than pity that the
Indian has no religion, holding up both hands,
and this to all the shallow-brained and bigoted
seems to mean something important. But it is
a distinction without a difference. Pray how
much more religion has the historian ? If
knows so much more about God than another, if
he has made some discovery of truth in this di
rection, I would thank him to publish it in " Silli-
man s Journal," with as few flourishes as possi
ble. It is the spirit of humanity, that which
animates both so-called savages and civilized
nations, working through a man, and not the
man expressing himself, that interests us most.
The thought of a so-called savage tribe is gen
erally far more just than that of a single civil-
i^ed man.
I perceive that we partially die ourselves,
through sympathy, at the death of each of our
friends or near relatives. Each such experience
/
334 WINTER.
is an assault on our vital force. It becomes a
source of wonder that they who have lost many
friends still live. After long watching around
the sick-bed of a friend, we too partially give up
the ghost with him, and are the less to be iden
tified with this state of things.
The writer must, to some extent, inspire him
self. Most of the sentences may at first be dead
in his essay, but when all are arranged, some
life and color will be reflected on them from the
mature and successful lines. They will appear
to pulsate with past life, and he will be enabled
to eke out their slumbering sense, and make
them worthy of their neighborhood. In his first
essay on a given theme, he produces scarcely
more than a frame and ground-work for his sen
timent and poetry. Each clear thought that he
attains to, draws in its train many kindred
thoughts or perceptions. The writer has much
to do even to create a theme for himself. Most
that is first written on any subject is a mere
groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foun
dation. It is only when many observations of
different periods have been brought together
that he begins to grasp his subject, and can
make one pertinent and just observation.
Feb. 3, 1860. . . . When I read some of the
rules for speaking and writing the English lan
guage correctly, as that a sentence must never
WINTER. 335
end with a particle, and perceive how implicitly
even the learned obey it, I think
Any fool can make a rule,
And every fool will mind it.
Feb. 4, 1841. . . . Music can make the most
nervous chord vibrate healthily. . . .
Wait till you can be genuinely polite, though
it be till doomsday, and not lose your chance
everlastingly by a cowardly yielding to young
etiquette. . . .
Not only by his cunning hand and brain, but
when he speaks, too, does man assert his superi
ority. He conquers the spaces with his voice as
well as the lion. The voice of a strong man
modulated to the cadence of some tune is more
imposing than any natural sound. The keeper s
is the most commanding voice in the menag
erie, and is heard over all its din. A strong,
musical voice imposes a new order and harmony
upon nature. From it as a centre, a law is
promulgated to the universe. What it lacks in
volume and loudness may always be made up in
musical expression and distinctness. The brute
growls to secure obedience, he threatens ; the man
speaks as if obedience were already secured.
Feb. 4, 1852. A mild, thawy day. The-
needles of the pine are the touchstone for the air.
Any change in that element is revealed to the
practiced eye by their livelier green or increased
336 WINTER.
motion. They are the tell-tales. Now they are
(the white pine) a cadaverous, misty blue, anon a
lively . . . light plays on them, and they seein to
erect themselves unusually, while the pitch pines
are a brighter yellowish green than usual. The
sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and
pass rays through them. The scent of bruised
pine leaves where a sled has passed is a little
exciting to me now.
I saw this afternoon such lively, blood-red
colors on a white pine stump recently cut, that
at first I thought the chopper had cut himself.
The heart of the tree was partly decayed, and
here and there the sounder parts were of this
vermilion (?) color alternating with the ordinary
white of the wood where it was apparently in
the earlier stages of decay. The color was live
lier for being wet with the melting snow.
Feb. 4, 1854. . . . We have not much that is
poetic in the accompaniments of the farmer s
life. Varro speaks of the swineherd as accus
toming the swine or boars to come at the sound
of a horn when he fed them with acorns. I re
member that my grandmother used to call her
cow home at evening from a near pasture to be
milked by thumping on the mortar which held
her salt. The tinkling cow-bell cannot be spared.
Even what most attracts us in the farmer s life
is not its profitableness. We love to go after the
WINTER. 337
cow not for the sake of her milk or her beef, or
the money they yield, but perchance to hear the
tinkling of the cow -bell. . . . We would keep
hens not for eggs, but to hear the cocks crow and
the hens cackle.
As for the locality of bee-hives, Varro says
they must be placed near the villa, " potissimum
ubi non resonent imagines, hie enim sonus harum
fugse causa existimatur esse," especially where
there are no echoes, " for this sound is thought
to be the cause of their flight."
Feb. 4, 1855. . . . Saw this p. M. a very dis
tinct otter track by the Rock, at the junction of
the two rivers. The separate foot tracks were
quite round, more than two inches in diameter,
showing the five toes distinctly in the snow,
which was about half an inch deep. In one place
where it had crossed last night to Merrick s pas
ture, its trail about six inches wide and of fur
rows in the snow was on one side of its foot
tracks, and there were about nine inches between
its fore and hind feet. Close by the great aspen
I saw where it had entered or come out of the
water under a shelf of ice left adhering to a
maple. There it apparently played or slid on the
level ice, making a broad trail, as if a shovel had
been shoved along, just eight inches wide, without
a foot track in it for four feet or more. And
again the trail was only two inches wide and
338 WINTER.
between the foot tracks, which were side by side
and twenty-two inches apart. . . . About the
edge of the hole, where the snow was all rubbed
off, was something white which looked and smelt
exactly like bits of the skin of pouts or eels.
Minott tells of one shot once while eating an eel.
V saw one this winter in this town eating
fish by a brook. . . .
I sometimes hear a prominent, but dull-witted
worthy man say, or hear that he has said rarely,
that if it were not for his firm belief in u an
overruling power," or " a perfect Being," etc.
But such poverty-stricken expressions only con
vince me of his habitual doubt, and that he
is surprised into a transient belief. Such a
man s expression of faith, moving solemnly in
the traditional furrow, and casting out all free-
thinking and living souls with the rusty mould-
board of his compassion or contempt, thinking
that he has Moses and all the prophets in his
wake, discourages and saddens me as an ex
pression of his narrow and barren want of faith.
I see that the infidels and skeptics have formed
themselves into churches, and weekly gather to
gether at the ringing of a bell. Sometimes
when in conversation or a lecture, I have been
grasping at, or even standing and reclining upon
the serene and everlasting truths that underlie
and support our vacillating life, I have seen
WINTER. 339
my auditors standing on their terra firma, a
quaking earth, crowded together on their Lisbon
Quay, and compassionately or timidly watching
my motions as if they were the antics of a rope-
dancer or mountebank intending to walk on air.
Feb. 4, 1858. p. M. To C. Miles swamp.
Discover the ledum latifolium quite abundant
on a space about six rods in diameter just E. of
the small pond-hole, growing with the androm-
eda calyculata, polifolia, kalmia glauca, etc.
. . . The ledum bears a general resemblance to
the water andromeda, with its dark-reddish, pur
plish, or rather mulberry leaves, reflexed ; but
nearer, it is distinguished by its coarseness, the
perfect tent form of its upper leaves, and the
large, conspicuous, terminal, roundish (strictly
oval) red buds, nearly as big as the swamp
pink s, but rounded. The woolly stem for a
couple of inches beneath the bud is frequently
bare, and conspicuously club-shaped. The rust
on the under sides of the leaves is of a lighter
color than that of Maine. The seed vessels,
which open at the base first, still hold on. The
plant might be easily confounded with the water
andromeda by a careless observer. . . .
I brought some home, and had a cup of tea
made of it, which, in spite of a slight piny or tur
pentine flavor, seemed unexpectedly good. . . .
As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a
340 WINTER.
presentiment that I should find the ledum in
Concord. It is a remarkable fact that in the
case of the most interesting plants which I have
discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated
finding them perhaps a year before the dis
covery.
Feb. 5, 1841. . . . Music is the crystalliza
tion of sound. There is something in the effect
of a harmonious voice upon the disposition of its
neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals.
It centralizes itself, and sounds like the pub
lished law of things. If the law of the universe
were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal law
giver would suspect it, for it would be a finer
melody than his ears ever attended to. It would
be sphere music. . . .
In all emergencies there is always one step
which you may take on firm ground, where
gravity will assure your footing. So you hold
a draft on Fate payable at sight.
Feb. 5, 1852. . . . Men do believe in sym
bols yet and can understand some. When Sir
Francis Head left his government in Upper Can
ada, and the usual farewell had been said, as
the vessel moved off, he, standing on the deck,
pointed, for all reply, to the British flag floating
over his head, and a shriek rather than a cheer
went up from the crowd on the piers who had
observed his gesture. . . .
WINTER. 341
Time never passes so rapidly and unaccount
ably as when I am engaged in recording my
thoughts. The world may perchance reach its
end for us in a profounder thought, and time
itself run down.
Feb. 5, 1853. . . . The frost is out of the
ground in many places. A stellaria media
[common chick weed] in blossom in the garden,
as was the case, of course, last month.
Feb. 5, 1854. . . . Shall we not have sym
pathy with the muskrat, which gnaws its third
leg off, not as pitying its suffering, but, through
our kindred mortality, appreciating its majestic
pains and its heroic virtue ? Are we not made
its brothers by fate ? For whom are psalms sung
and mass said, if not for such worthies as these ?
When I hear the church organ peal, or feel the
trembling tones of the bass-viol, I see in imag
ination the muskrat gnawing off his leg. I offer
up a note that his affliction may be sanctified to
each and all of us. . . . When I think of the
tragedies which are constantly permitted in the
course of all animal life, they make the plaintive
strain of the universal harp which elevates us
above the trivial. . . . Even as the worthies of
mankind are said to recommend human life by
having lived it, so I could not spare the example
of the muskrat.
Feb. 5, 1859. When we have experienced
342 WINTER.
many disappointments, such as the loss of friends,
the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did.
Feb. 6, 1841. One may discover a new side
to his most intimate friend when for the first
time he hears him *speak in public. He will be
strange to him as he is more familiar to the au
dience. The longest intimacy could not foretell
how he would behave then. When I observe
my friend s conduct toward others, then chiefly
I learn the traits in his character, and in each
case I am unprepared for the issue. . . . How
little do we know each other. Who can tell how
his friend would behave on any occasion. . . .
What I am must make you forget what I
wear. The fashionable world is content to be
eclipsed by its dress, and never will bear the
contrast. . . .
Lu ral lu ral lu may be more impressively
sung than very respectable wisdom talked. It is
well timed, as wisdom is not always.
Feb. 6, 1852. . . . The artificial system has
been very properly called the dictionary, and
the natural method, the grammar of the science
of botany, by botanists themselves. But are we
to have nothing but grammars and dictionaries
of this literature ? Are there no works written
in the language of flowers ? I asked a learned
and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time
the courteous guardian of a public library, to
WINTER. 343
direct me to those works which contained the
more . . . popular account or biography of par
ticular flowers from which the botanies I had
met with appeared to draw sparingly, for I
trusted that each flower had had many lovers
and faithful describers in past times. But he in
formed me that I had read all, that no one was
acquainted with them, they were only catalogued
like his books. . . .
Who will not confess that the necessity to get
money has helped to ripen some of his schemes ?
Feb. 6, 1853. Observed some buds on a young
apple-tree partially unfolded at the extremity
and apparently swollen. Probably blossom buds.
Feb. 6, 1855. The coldest morning this win
ter. Our thermometer stands at 14 at 9 A. M.
Others, we hear, at 6 A. M. stood at 18.
There are no loiterers in the street, and the
wheels of wagons squeak as they have not for a
long time, actually shriek. Frostwork keeps its
place on the window within three feet of the
stove all day in my chamber. At 4 P. M., the
thermometer is at 10. At six it is at 14.
I was walking at five, and found it stinging cold.
. . . When I look out at the chimneys, I see
that the cold and hungry air snaps up the smoke
at once. The smoke is clear and light colored,
and does not get far into the air before it is dis
sipated (?), condensed. The setting sun no
344 WINTER.
sooner leaves our west windows than a solid, but
beautiful crystallization coats them, except, it
may be, a triangularish bare spot at one corner
which, perhaps, the sun lias warmed and dried.
... A solid, sparkling field in the midst of
each pane, with broad, flowing sheaves surround
ing it. It has been a very mild as well as open
winter up to this. At 9 o clock p. M., thermom
eter at 16. They say it did not rise above
6 to-day.
Feb. 7, 1853. The coldest night for a long,
long time. Sheets froze stiff about the face.
. . . People dreaded to go to bed. The ground
cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had
blown up, and the timbers of the house also.
My pail of water was frozen in the morning so
that I could not break it. ... Iron was like
fire in the hands. [Mercury ?] at about 7.30
A. M. gone into the bulb of the thermometer
19 at least. . . . Bread, meat, milk, cheese,
etc., all frozen. . . . The inside of your cellar
door all covered and sparkling with frost like
Golconda. The latches are white with frost, and
every nail-head in entries, etc., has a white head.
. . . Neighbor Smith s thermometer stood at
26 early this morning. But the day is at
length more moderate than yesterday. . . . This
will be remembered as the cold Tuesday. The
old folks still refer to the cold Friday, when they
WINTER. 345
sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with
a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze
on the mantel-piece.
Feb. 7, 1838. Zeno, the Stoic, stood in pre
cisely the same relation to the world that I do
now. He is forsooth bred a merchant, as how
many still, and can trade, and barter, and perhaps
higgle, and moreover he can be shipwrecked and
cast ashore at the Piraeus, like one of your
Johns or Thomases. He strolls into a shop,
and is charmed by a book, by Xenophon, and
straightway he becomes a philosopher. The
sun of a new life s day rises to him serene and
unclouded, which looks over o-roa. And still the
fleshly Zeno sails on, shipwrecked, buffeted,
tempest-tossed, but the true Zeno sails over a
placid sea. Play high, play low, rain, sleet, or
snow, it s all the same with the stoic. . . . When
evening comes, he sits down unwearied to the
review of his day, what s done that s to be un
done, what not done at all still to be done ;
himself Truth s unconcerned helpmate. An
other system of book-keeping this, then, that the
Cyprian trader to Phoenicia practiced.
This was he who said to a certain garrulous
young man, " On this account have we two ears
and but one mouth, that we may hear more, and
speak less." . . . The wisest may apologize that
he only said so to hear himself talk, for if he
346 WINTER.
heard not, as well for him had he never spoken.
What is all this gabble to the gabbler ? Only
the silent reap the profit of it.
Feb. 7, 1841. . . . There would be a new
year s gift, indeed, if we would bestow on each
other our sincerity. We should communicate
our wealth, and not purchase that which does
not belong to us, for a sign. Why give each
other a sign to keep ? If we gave the thing
itself, there would be no need of a sign. ...
The eaves are running on the south side of
the house, the titmouse lisps in ;fche poplar, the
bells are ringing for church, while the sun pre
sides over all and makes his simple warmth
more obvious than all else. What shall I do
with the hour so like time and yet so fit for
eternity?/ Where in me are these russet patches
of ground, and scattered logs and chips in the
yard ? I do not feel cluttered. I have some
notion what the Johns wort and life-everlasting
may be thinking about when the sun shines on
me as on them, and turns my prompt thought
into just such a seething shimmer. J lie out as
indistinct as a heath at noonday. I am evapo
rating and ascending into the sun. . . .
The most I can do for my friend is simply to
be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on
him. If he knows that I am happy in loving
him, he will want no other reward. Is not
Friendship divine in this ?
WINTER. 347
I have myself to respect, but to myself I am
not amiable ; but my friend is my amiableness
personified. . . .
The world has never learned what men can
build each other up to be, when both master and
work in love. . . .
Wait not till I invite thee, but observe .that
I am glad to see thee when thou comesj^
The most ardent lover holds yet a private
court, and his love can never be so strong and
ethereal that there will not be danger that
judgment be rendered against the beloved. . . .
So far as we respond to our ideal estimate of
each other, do we have profitable intercourse.
Feb. 7, 1857. Hayden, the elder, tells me
that the quails have come to his yard every day
for about a month, and are just as tame as
chickens. They come about his wood shed, he
supposes, to pick up the worms that have dropped
out of the wood, and when it storms hard, gather
together in a corner of the shed. He walks
within about three or four feet of them without
disturbing them. . . . They will be about his
yard the greater part of the day; were there
yesterday, though it was so warm, but now prob
ably can get food enough elsewhere. They go
just the same to Poland s across the road.
About ten years ago there was a bevy of fifteen
that used to come from the same woods, and one
348 WINTER.
day they being in the barn and scared by the
cat, four ran into the hay and died there. . . .
Thus it seems in severe winters the quails ven
ture out of the woods, and join the poultry of
the farmer s yard, if it be near the edge of the
wood. It is remarkable that this bird, which
thus half domesticates itself, should not be found
wholly domesticated before this.
Feb. 7, 1858. ... If possible, come upon
the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through
woods, and then look off from it to the distant
earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you
can see directly down it, i. e., bringing its own
near top against the distant landscape.
Feb. 7, 1859. Evidently the distant woods
are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day
in winter, and is not this connected with the
blue in snow in similar days ?
Going along the Nut Meadow on Jimmy Miles s
road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails,
brightening with the moisture, I feel like study
ing them again as a relisher and tonic, to make
life go down and digest well, as we use pepper
and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of
winter green which we gather and assimilate
with our eyes. That s the true use of the study
of lichens. I expect thus the lichenist will
have the keenest relish for Nature in her every
day mood and dress. He will have the appetite
of the worm that never dies, of the grub. To
WINTER. 849
study lichens is to get a taste of earth and
health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This
product of the bark is the essence of all tonics.
The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very
crust of the earth. A taste for this study is an
evidence of titanic health, a rare earthiness. It
makes not so much blood as soil of life. It fits
a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest
experience. A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or
melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom
like the rose. As some strong animal appetites,
not satisfied with starch and muscle and fat, are
fain to eat that which eats and digests the con
tents of the crop, the stomach and entrails
themselves, so the lichenist loves the tripe of the
rock, that which eats and digests the rocks. He
eats the eater. Eat-all may be his name. A
lichenist fattens where others starve. His prov
ender never fails. . . . There is no such colly-
rium or salve for sore eyes as these brightening
lichens on a moist day. Go bathe and screen your
eyes with them in the softened light of the woods.
Feb. 8, 1839. When the poetic frenzy seizes
us, we run and scratch with our pen, delighting,
like the cock, in the dust we make, but do not
detect where the jewel lies which we have in the
mean time cast to a distance, or quite covered
up again.
Feb. 8, 1841. All we have experienced is so
much gone within us, and there lies. It is the
350 WINTER.
company we keep. One day, in health or sick
ness, it will come out and be remembered.
Neither body nor soul forgets anything. The"
twig always remembers the wind that shook it,
and the stone the cuff it received. Ask the old
tree and the sand. . . .
Are we not always in youth so long as we
face heaven ? We may always live in the morn
ing of our days. To him who seeks early, the
sun never gets over the edge of the horizon, but
his rays fall slanting forever. . . .
My journal is that of me which would else
spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the
field which in action I reap. I must not live
for it, but, in it, for the gods. They are my
correspondent to whom daily I send off this
sheet, post-paid. I am clerk in their counting-
room, and at evening transfer the account from
day-book to ledger. It is a leaf which hangs
over my head in the path. I bend the twig,
and write my prayers on it ; then, letting it go,
the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to
heaven ; as if it were not kept shut in my desk,
but were as public a leaf as any in nature. It
is papyrus by the river side, it is vellum in the
pastures, it is parchment on the hills. . . . Like
the sere leaves in yonder vase, these have been
gathered far and wide. Upland and lowland,
forest and field, have been ransacked.
WINTER. 351
In our holiest moment, our devil with a leer
stands close at hand. He is a very busy devil.
. . . When I go forth with zeal to some good
work, my devil is sure to get his robe tucked
up the first, and arrives there as soon as T, with
a look of sincere earnestness, which puts to
shame my best intent. . . . He has a winning
way of recommending himself by making him
self useful. How readily he comes into my best
project, and does his work with a quiet and
steady cheerfulness which even virtue may take
pattern from. ... I never did a charitable
thing, but there he stood, scarce in the rear, hat
in hand, partner in the same errand, ready to
share the smile of gratitude. Though I shut
the door never so quick, and tell him to stay
home like a good dog, he will out with me, for I
shut in my own legs so, and he escapes in the
mean while, and is ready to back and reinforce
me in most virtuous deeds. If I turn and say,
" Get thee behind me," he then indeed turns
too, and takes the lead, though he seems to re
tire with a pensive and compassionate lool^as
much as to say, " Ye know not what ye d<v
Feb. 8, 1852. . . . Tuckerman sjfcjfs cunning
ly, " If the rapt admirer of the wonders and
beauties of life and being might well come to
learn of our knowledge the laws and the history
of what he loves, let us remember that we have
352 VSINTER.
the best right to all the pleasure that he has dis
covered, and that we are not complete if we do
not possess it all. Linnaeus was as hearty a
lover and admirer of nature, as if he had been
nothing more." . . .
Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riorden. I
found that the shanty was warmed by the simple
social relations of the Irish. On Sunday they
come from the town and stand in the doorway,
and so keep out the cold. One is not cold
among his brothers and sisters. What if there
is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the
heart. These Irish are not succeeding so ill
after all. The little boy goes to the primary
school, and proves a foremost boy there, and the
mother s brother, who has let himself in the vil
lage, tells me that he takes " The Flag of Our
Union," if that is the paper edited by an Irishman.
It is musical news that Johnny does not love to
be kept at home from school in deep snows.
Feb. 8, 1854. . . . Josselyn, speaking of crick
ets, says, "The Italian who hath them cryed
up and down the streets (Gfritti che cantano),
and buyeth them to put into his gardens, if he
were in New England would gladly be rid of
them, they make such a din in the evening." I
am more charmed by the Italian s taste than by
Josselyn s impatience.
Feb. 8, 1857. Debauched and worn out
WINTER. 353
senses require the violent vibrations of an in
strument to excite them, but sound and still
youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear
music in the wind and rain and running water.
One would think, from reading the critics, that
music was intermittent, as a spring in the desert,
dependent on some Paganini or Mozart, or
heard only when the Pierians or Euterpeans
drive through the villages, but music is perpet
ual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it
in the softened air of these warm February days
which have broken the back of the winter. . . .
Again and again I congratulate myself on my
so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed
yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which
I did not know that I possessed, though now I
should be sorry to lose them. The week that
I go away to lecture is unspeakably cheapened.
The preceding and succeeding days are a mere
sloping down to and up from it. In the society
of many men, or in the midst of what is called
success, I find my life of no account, and my
spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the bar-
renest pasture lying fallow than cursed with the
compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous
and accursed desert where Babylon once stood.
But when I hear only the rustling oak leaf, or
the faint metallic cheep of the tree sparrow,
for variety in my winter walk, my life becomes
354 WINTER.
continent, and sweet as the kernel of a nut.
I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf
at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own
accord at my approach than receive a ship-load
of stars and garters from the strange kings and
peoples of the earth. By poverty, i. e., sim
plicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am
solidified and crystallized as a vapor or liquid by
cold. It is a singular concentration of strength
and energy and flavor. Chastity is perpetual
acquaintance with the All. My diffuse and va
porous life becomes as the frost leaves and
spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stub
ble in a winter morning. You think I am im
poverishing myself by withdrawing from men,
but in my solitude I have woven for myself a
silken web or chrysalis, and nymph-like shall
erelong burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted
for a higher society. . . .
And now another friendship is ended. I do
not know what has made my friend doubt me,
but I know that in love there is 110 mistake, and
that any estrangement is well-founded. But my
destiny is not narrowed, rather, if possible, the
broader for it. The heavens withdraw, and arch
themselves higher. I am sensible not only of
a moral, but even of a grand physical pain, such
as gods may feel, about my head and breast, a
certain ache and fullness. This rending of a
WINTER. 355
tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no acci
dent that we may avoid, it is only the award of
fate that is affecting us. I know of no a3ons
or periods, no life and death, but these meetings
and separations. My life is like a stream that
is suddenly dammed and has no outlet. But it
rises higher up the hills that shut it in, and will
become a deep and silent lake. Certainly there
is no event comparable for grandeur with the
eternal separation, if we may conceive it so,
from a being that we have known. I become in
a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and
infinite. What a grand significance the word
" never " acquires ! With one with whom we have
walked on high ground, we cannot deal on any
lower ground ever after. We have tried so many
years to put each other to this immortal use,
and have failed. Undoubtedly our good genii
have mutually found the material unsuitable.
We have hitherto paid each other the highest
possible compliment, we have recognized each
other constantly as divine, have afforded each
other that opportunity to live that no other
wealth or kindness can afford. And now for
some reason inappreciable by us, it has become
necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid.
Perchance there is none beside who knows us
for a god, and none whom we know for such.
Each man and woman is a veritable god or god-
356 WINTER.
dess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised.
There is only one in each case who sees through
the disguise. That one who does not stand so
near to any man as to see the divinity in him is
truly alone. I am perfectly sad at parting from
you. I could better have the earth taken away
from under my feet, than the thought of you
from my mind. One while I think that some
great injury has been done, with which you are
implicated ; again, that you are no party to it.
I fear that there may be incessant tragedies, that
one may treat his fellow as a god, but receive
somewhat less regard from him. I now almost
for the first time fear this. Yet I believe that
in the long run there is no such inequality.
Feb. 8, 1860. 2 P. M. Up river to Fair Haven
Hill. Thermometer 43. . . . There is a pe
culiarity in the air when the temperature is thus
high, and the weather fair at this season, which
makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if
they trusted themselves abroad farther in this
genial state of the air. A different sound comes
to my ear now from iron rails which are struck,
from the cawing of crows, etc. Sound is not
abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet
and musical. There must be a still more genial
and milder air before the bluebird s warble can
be heard.
Feb. 8, 1861. Coldest day yet. 22 at
WINTER. 357
least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and so far
as I can learn, not above 6 all day.
Feb. 9, 1838. It is wholesome advice " to be a
man amongst folks." Go into society, if you
will, or if you are unwilling, and take a human
interest in its affairs. If you mistake these
Messieurs and Mesdames for so many men and
women, it is but erring on the safe side, or
rather it is their error and not yours. Armed
with a manly sincerity, you shall not be trifled
with, but drive this business of life. To manage
the small talk of a party is to make an effort to
do what was at first done admirably, because
naturally, at your own fireside.
Feb. 9, 1841. . . .
" Whoe er is raised
For wealth he has not, he is taxed, not praised,"
says Jonson. If you mind the flatterer, you rob
yourself, and still cheat him. The fates never
exaggerate. Men pass for what they are. The
state never fails to get a revenue out of you
without a direct tax. What I am praised for
which I have not, I put to the account of the
gods. It needs a skillful eye to distinguish
between their coin and my own. However, there
can be no loss either way. For what meed I
have earned is equally theirs. Let neither fame
nor infamy hit you, but one go as far beyond
as the other falls behind. Let the one glance
358 WINTER.
past you to the gods, and the other wallow where
it was engendered. The home thrusts are at hel-
O
mets upon blocks, and my worst foes but stab an
armor through.
My life at this moment is like a summer morn
ing when birds are singing. Yet that is false,
for nature s is an idle pleasure in comparison.
My hour has a more solid serenity.
I have been breaking silence these twenty-
three years, and have hardly made a rent in it.
Silence has no end. Speech is but the begin
ning of it. My friend thinks I keep silence
who am only choked with letting it out so fast.
Does he forget that new mines of secrecy are
constantly opening in me ? ...
When your host shuts his door on you, he
incloses you in the dwelling of nature. He
thrusts you over the threshold of the world. My
foes restore me to my friends. I might say
friendship had no ears, as love has no eyes, for
no word is evidence in its court. The least act
fulfills more than all words profess. The most
gracious speech is but partial kindness, but the
smallest genuine deed takes the whole man. If
we had waited till doomsday, it could never
have been uttered.
Feb. 9, 1852. I am interested to see the
seeds of the poke, about a dozen, shiny, black,
with a white spot, somewhat like a saba bean in
shape, the still full granary of the birds.
WINTER. 359
9 A. M. Up river to Fair Haven Pond. . . .
Met on the river, . . . fishing, wearing an
old coat much patched with many colors. He
represents the Indian still. The very patches
on his coat and his improvident life do so. I
feel that he is as essential a part, nevertheless,
of our community as the lawyer in the village.
He tells me that he caught three pickerel here
the other day that weighed seven pounds all to
gether. It is the old story. The fisherman is a
natural story-teller. No man s imagination plays
more pranks than his, while he is tending his
reels, and trotting from one to another, or watch
ing his cork in summer. He is ever waiting for
the sky to fall. He has sent out a venture. He
has a ticket in the lottery of fate, and who
knows what it may draw. He ever expects to
catch a bigger fish yet. He is the most patient
and believing of men. Who else will stand so
long in wet places ? When the hay-maker runs
to shelter, he takes down his pole, and bends
his steps to the river, glad to have a leisure day.
. . . He is more like an inhabitant of nature. . . .
Men tell about the mirage to be seen in cer
tain deserts, and in peculiar states of the atmos
phere. The mirage is constant. The state of
the atmosphere is continually varying, and to
a keen observer objects do not twice present ex
actly the same appearance. If I invert my head
360 WINTER.
this morning and look at the woods in the
horizon, they do not look so far off and elysian-
like as in the afternoon. If I mistake not, it is
late in the afternoon when the atmosphere is in
such a state that we derive the most pleasure
from and are most surprised by this experiment.
The prospect is thus a constantly varying mirage
answering to the condition of our perceptive fac
ulties and our fluctuating imagination. If we
incline our heads never so little, the most famil
iar things begin to put on some new aspect. If
we invert our heads completely, our desecrated
wood-lot appears far off, incredible, elysian, un-
profaned by us. As you cannot swear through
glass, no more can you swear through air, the
thinnest section of it. ... When was not the
air as elastic as our spirits. ... It is a new
glass placed over the picture every hour. . . .
When I break off a twig of green-barked
sassafras, as I am going through the woods now,
and smell it, I am startled to find it fragrant
as in summer. It is an importation of all the
spices of Oriental summers into our New England
winter, very foreign to the snow and the oak
leaves.
Feb. 9, 1853. . . . Saw the grisly bear near the
Haymarket [Boston] to-day, said (?) to weigh
nineteen hundred pounds ; apparently too much.
He looked four feet and a few inches in height
WINTER. 361
by as much in length, not including his great
head and his tail, which was invisible. He
looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws,
and cleaned between them with his tongue.
Small eyes and funny little ears. Perfectly bear
ish, with a strong wild beast scent ; fed on Indian
meal and water. Hind paws a foot long. Ly
ing down with his feet up against the bars ; often
sitting up in the corner on his hind quarters.
Feb. 9, 1855. Snowed harder in the night,
and blew considerably. ... I was so sure this
storm would bring snowbirds that I went to the
window at ten to look for them, and there they
were. Also, a downy woodpecker (perhaps a
hairy) flitted high across the street to an elm
in front of the house, and commenced assidu
ously tapping, his head going like a hammer.
Feb. 9, 1858. . . . Saw, at Simon Brown s, a
sketch, apparently made with a pen, on which
was written, " Concord Jail, near Boston, Amer
ica," and on a fresher piece of paper, on which
the above was pasted, was written, " The jail in
which General Sir Arch 1 ** Campbell and
Wilson were confined when taken off Boston in
America by a French Privateer." A letter on
the back side from Mr. Lewis of Framingham
to Mr. Brown stated that Mr. Lewis had re
ceived the sketch from a grandson of Wilson
who drew it. You are supposed to be in the
362 WINTER.
jail yard, or close to it westward, and see the old
jail, garnbrel-roofed, the old Hurd house (partly)
west of the grave-yard, the grave-yard and Dr.
Hurd house, and over the last, and to the north
of it, a wooded hill, apparently Windmill Hill.
Just north of the Hurd house, beyond it, appar
ently the Court-house and School-house, both
with belfries, also the road to the battle ground,
and a distant farmhouse on a hill, French s or
Buttrick s, perhaps.
Feb. 10, 1841. . . . Our thoughts and actions
may be very private for a long time, for they
demand a more catholic publicity to be dis
played in than the world can afford. Our best
deeds shun the narrow walks of men, and are
not ambitious of the faint light the world can
shed on them, but delight to unfold themselves
in that public ground between God and con
science. . . . Within, where I resolve and deal
with principles, there is more space and room
than anywhere without where my hands execute.
Men should hear of your virtue only as they
hear the creaking of the earth s axle and the
music of the spheres. It will fall into the
course of nature, and be effectually concealed by
publicness.
Feb. 10, 1852. Now if there are any who
think I am vainglorious, that I set myself up
above others, and crow over their low estate,
WINTER. 363
let me say that I could tell a pitiful story re
specting myself as well as them, if my spirits
held out to do it. I could encourage them with
a sufficient list of failures, and could flow as
humbly as the very gutters themselves. ... I
think worse of myself than they can possibly
think of me, being better acquainted with the
man. I put the best face on the matter. I will
tell them this secret, if they will not tell it to
anybody else.
Write while the heat is in you. When the
farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the
iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every
moment it is less effectual to penetrate it. ...
The writer who postpones the recording of his
thoughts, uses an iron which has cooled to burn
a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of
his audience. . . .
I saw yesterday in the snow on the ice on the
S. side of Fair Haven Pond some hundreds of
honey bees dead and sunk half an inch be
low the crust. They had evidently come forth
from their hive, perhaps in a large hemlock on
the bank close by, and had fallen on the snow,
chilled to death. Their bodies extended about
three rods from the tree toward the pond.
Feb. 10, 1854. ... I observe the great, well-
protected buds of the balm of Gilead, spear
head-like. There is no shine upon them now,
364 WINTER.
and their viscidness is not very apparent. A
great many willow catkins show a little down
peeping from under the points of the scales, but
I have no doubt that all this was done last fall.
I noticed it then.
Feb. 10, 1855. ... I hear the faint metallic
chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to
time, or perchance the mew of a linaria. It is
worth while to let some pigweed grow in your
garden, if only to attract these winter visitors.
It would be a pity to have these weeds burned
in the fall. Of the former, I see in the winter
but three or four commonly at a time ; of the
latter, large flocks. This is in or after consider
able snow-storms.
Feb. 10, 1856. . . . p. M. To Walden. Ke-
turning I saw a fox on the railroad, . . . eight
or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty
yellow, and lean. I did not notice the white tip
to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears,
and at first ran up and along the E. bank on the
crust, then changed his mind, and came down
the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me,
and gliding up the west bank, disappeared in
the woods. He coursed or glided along easily,
appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over
obstacles with his tail extended straight behind.
He leaped over the ridge of snow about two
feet high and three wide between the tracks,
WINTER. 365
very gracefully. I followed examining his
tracks. There was about a quarter of an inch
of recent snow above the crust, but for the most
part he broke in two or three inches. I slumped
from one to three feet. . . . He went off at an
easy gliding pace such as he might keep up for
a long time, pretty direct after his first turn
ing.
Feb. 10, 1857. . . . Burton, the traveler, quotes
an Arab saying, " Voyaging is a victory," which
he refers to the feeling of independence on over
coming the difficulties and dangers of the des
ert. But I think that commonly voyaging is a
defeat, a rout to which the traveler is compelled
by want of valor. The traveler s peculiar valor
is commonly a bill of exchange. He is at home
anywhere but where he was born and bred,
petitioning some Sir Joseph Banks or other rep
resentative of a Geographical Society to avail
himself of his restlessness, and if not receiving
a favorable answer, necessarily going off some
where next morning. It is a prevalent disease
which attacks Americans especially, both men
and women, the opposite to nostalgia. Yet it
does not differ much from nostalgia. I read
the story of one voyager round the world, who
it seemed to me, having started, had no other
object but to get home again, only she took the
longest way round. The traveler, fitted out by
366 WINTER.
some Sir Joseph Banks, snatches at a fact or
two in behalf of science, as he goes, just as a
panther in his leap will take off a man s sleeve,
and land twenty feet beyond him, when travel
ing down hill.
Feb. 10, 1860. . . . The river where open is
very black, as usual, when the waves run high,
for each wave casts a shadow. Theophrastus
notices that the roughened water is black, and
says it is because fewer rays fall on it, and the
light is dissipated. . . .
I do not know of any more exhilarating walk
ing than up or down a broad field of smooth ice
like this in a cold, glittering, winter day, when
your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice.
Feb. 11, 1841. True help, for the most part,
implies a greatness in him who is to be helped as
well as in the helper. It takes a god to be helped
even. A great person, though unconsciously,
will constantly give you great opportunities to
serve him, but a mean one will quite preclude
all active benevolence. It needs but simply and
greatly to want it for once, that all true men
may contend who shall be foremost to render
aid. My neighbor s state must pray to heaven
so devoutly, yet disinterestedly, as he never
prayed in words, before my ears can hear. It
must ask divinely. But men so cobble and
botch their request that you must stoop as low
WINTER. 367
as they to give them aid. Their meanness would
drag down your deed to be a compromise with
conscience, and not leave it to be done on the
high table-land of the benevolent soul. . . . But
if I am to serve them, I must not serve the
devil. . . . We go about mending the times
when we should be building the eternity.
Feb. 11, 1852. ... I have lived some thirty
odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear
the first syllable of valuable or even earnest ad
vice from my seniors. They have told me noth
ing, and probably can tell me nothing, to the
purpose. There is life, an experiment untried
by me, and it does not avail me that you have
tried it. If I have any valuable experience I
am sure to reflect that this my mentors said
nothing about. What were mysteries to the
child remain mysteries to the old man.
It is a mistake to suppose that in a country
where railroads and steamboats and the print
ing press and the church, where the usual evi
dences of civilization exist, the condition of a
very large body of the inhabitants may not be
as degraded as that of savages. ... To know
this, I should not need to look farther than to
the shanties which everywhere line our railroads,
that last improvement in civilization. But I
will refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one
of the white, or enlightened spots on the map.
368 WINTER.
Yet I have no doubt that that nation s rulers are
as wise as the average of civilized rulers.
Feb. 12. Living all winter with an open door
for light, and no visible wood -pile, the forms
of old and young are permanently contracted
through long shrinking from cold, and their
faces pinched by want. I have seen an old
crone sitting bare-headed on the hillside in the
middle of January, while it was raining, and the
ground was slowly thawing under her, knitting
there. . . . There is no greater squalidness in
any part of the world. Contrast the condition
of these Irish with that of the North American
Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other
savage race before they are degraded by contact
with civilized man.
Feb. 11, 1853. . . . While surveying on the
Hunt farm the other day, behind Simon Brown s
house, I heard a remarkable echo. In the
course of surveying, being obliged to call aloud
to my assistant from every side and almost every
part of a farm in succession and at various
hours of a day, I am pretty sure to discover an
echo, if any exists. That day it was encouraging
and soothing to hear one. After so many days
of comparatively insignificant drudgery with
stupid companions, this leisure, this sportiveness,
this generosity in nature, sympathizing with the
better part of me, somebody I could talk with,
WINTER. 369
one degree at least better than talking with one s
self. Ah, Simon Brown s premises harbor a
hired man and a hired maid he wots not of ;
some voice of somebody I pined to hear, with
whom I could form a community. I did wish
rather to linger there and call all day to the air,
and hear my words repeated, but a vulgar neces
sity dragged me along round the bounds of the
farm to hear only the stale answers of my chain-
man shouted back to me. . . . Has it to do with
the season of the year ? I have since heard an
echo on Moore s farm.
It was the memorable event of the day, that
echo I heard, not anything my companions
said, or the travelers I met, or my thoughts, for
they were all mere repetitions or echoes in the
worst sense of what I had heard and thought
before many times, but this echo was accompa
nied with novelty, and by its repetition of my
voice it did more than double that. It was
a profounder Socratic method of suggesting
thoughts unutterable to me the speaker. Here
was one I heartily love to talk with. Under
such favorable auspices, I could converse with
myself, could reflect. The hour, the atmosphere,
and the conformation of the ground permitted it.
Feb. 11, 1854. 7.30 A. M. Snow fleas lie in
black patches like some of those dark, rough
lichens on rocks, or like ink spots three or four
370 WINTER.
inches in diameter, about the grass stems or
willows, on the ice which froze last night.
When I breathe on them, I find them all alive
and ready to skip. Also the water, when I
break the ice, arouses them.
I saw yesterday in a muddy spring in Tarbell s
meadow many cockle shells on the bottom, with
their feet out, and marks as if they had been
moving.
When I read of the catkins of the alder and
the willow, etc., scattering their yellow pollen,
they impress me as a vegetation which belongs
to the earliest and most innocent dawn of nature,
as if they must have preceded other trees in the
order of creation, as they precede them annually
in their blossoming and leafing. . . . For how
many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen
annually before man was created !
In the winter we so value the semblance of
fruit that even the dry, black female catkins of
the alder are an interesting sight, not to men
tion, on shoots rising a foot or two above these,
the red or mulberry male catkins in little par
cels dangling at a less than right angle with the
stems, and the short female ones at their bases.
Apparently I read Cato and Yarro from the
same motives that Virgil did, and as I read the
almanac, the " N. E. Farmer," or " Cultivator,"
or Howitt s " Seasons."
WINTER. 371
Feb. 11, 1856. . . . Saw a partridge by the
river side . . . which at first I mistook for the
top of a fence post above the snow amid some
alders. I shouted and waved my hand four
rods off to see if it was one, but there was no
motion, and I thought surely it must be a post.
Nevertheless I resolved to investigate. Within
three rods I saw to my surprise that it was in
deed a partridge, standing perfectly still, with its
head erect and neck stretched upward. It was
as complete a deception as if it had designedly
placed itself on the line of the fence and in the
proper place for a post. It finally stepped off
daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and
took to wing.
Feb. 11, 1859. . . . Now, as after a freshet
in cold weather, the ice which had formed
around and frozen to the trees and bushes along
the shore, settling, draws them down to the
ground or water, after breaking them exten
sively. It reminds you of an alligator or other
evil genius of the river pulling the trees and
bushes, which had come to drink, into the water.
If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to
slip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying
with it, their fate is sealed, for the water freez
ing that night takes fast hold of them like a
vise, and when the water runs out from beneath,
an irresistible weight brings them down to the
372 WINTER,
ground and holds them there. Only the spring
sun will soften the heart of this relentless mon
ster when commonly it is too late.
Feb. 12, 1840. . . . Knavery is more foolish
than folly, since, half knowing its own foolish
ness, it still persists. The knave has reduced
folly to a system, is the prudent, common-sense
fool.
Feb. 12, 1851. ... I find that it is an ex
cellent walk for variety and novelty and wild-
ness to keep round the edge of the meadow.
The ice not being strong enough to bear, and
transparent as water, on the bare ground or snow
just between the highest water mark and the pres
ent water line is a narrow, meandering walk rich
in unexpected views and objects. The line of
rubbish which marks the higher tides, withered
flags and seeds and twigs and cranberries, is to
my eyes a very agreeable and significant line
which nature traces along the edge of the mead
ows. It is a strongly marked, enduring, natural
line which in summer reminds me that the water
has once stood over where I walk. Sometimes
the grooved trees tell the same tale. The wrecks
of the meadow fill a thousand coves, and tell
a thousand tales to those who can read them ;
our prairial, mediterranean shore. ... If you
cannot go on the ice, you are then gently com
pelled to take this course, which is, on the whole,
WINTER. 373
more beautiful, to follow the sinuosities of the
meadow.
Feb. 12, 1854. . . . p. M. Skate to Pantry
Brook. . . . One accustomed to glide over a
boundless and variegated ice floor like this can
not be much attracted by tessellated floors and
mosaic work. I skate over a thin ice all tessel
lated, so to speak, or on which you see the forms
of the crystals as they shoot. . . . To make a
perfect winter day like this, you must have a
clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow,
sufficient cold, no wind, and the warmth must
come directly from the sun. It must not be a
thawing warmth. The tension of nature must
O
not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant, if
bare. You hear the lisping music of chickadees
from time to time, and the unrelenting steel-cold
scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into
a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming
cold, hard, tense, frozen music like the winter
sky itself. . . . There is no hint of incubation
in the jay s scream. There is no cushion for
sound now. It tears our ears.
I frequently see three or four old white
birches standing together on the edge of a pond
or meadow, and am struck by the pleasing man
ner in which they will commonly be grouped,
how they spread so as to make room for each
other, and make an agreeable impression upon
374 WINTER.
the eye. Methinks I have seen groups of three
in different places arranged almost exactly
alike.
Returning I overhauled a muskrat s house by
Bidens Brook. For want of other material it
was composed of grass flags, and in a great
measure (one half ) of twigs and sticks, mostly
sweet-gale, both dead and alive, and roots, from
six inches to two feet in length. These were in
fact the principal material of it, and it was a
large one, two feet above the ice. I was sur
prised to find that these sticks, both green and
dead, had the greater part of them been gnawed
off by the rat, and some were nearly half an inch
in diameter. They were cut off not at a right
angle, with a smooth cut, but by successive cuts,
smooth as with a knife, the twig being at the
same time bent down, which produced a sloping,
and, so to speak, terraced surface. I did not
know before that the muskrat resembled the
beaver in this respect also. It was chiefly the
sweet-gale thus cut, commonly the top left on
two feet long, but sometimes cut off six inches
long.
I see, as I skate, reflected from the surface
of the ice, flakes of rainbow, somewhat like
cobwebs, where the great slopes of the crystalliz
ation fall at the right angle, six inches or a foot
across, but at so small an angle with the horizon
WINTER. 375
that they had seemed absolutely flat and level
before. Think of this kind of mosaic and
tessellation for your floor, composed of crystals
variously set, made up of surfaces not absolutely
level, though level to the touch of the feet and
to the noonday eye, but just enough inclined to
reflect the colors of the rainbow when the sun
gets low.
Feb. 12, 1857. 7.30 A. M. The caterpillar
which I placed last night on the snow beneath
the thermometer is frozen stiff again, this time
not being curled up, the temperature being 6
now. Yet being placed on the mantel-piece, it
thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes,
before the rear part of its body is limber. Per
haps they were revived last week when the ther
mometer stood at 52 and 53.
Feb. 12, 1860. 2 p. M. 22. Walk up river
to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy. . . .
In this cold, clear, rough air from the N. W. we
walk amid what simple surroundings, surrounded
by our thoughts or imaginary objects. . . .
Above me is a cloudless blue sky, beneath is the
sky blue, i. e., sky-reflecting ice, with patches of
snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds.
At a distance in several directions I see the
tawny earth streaked or spotted with white,
where the bank, or hills and fields appear, or
the green-black, evergreen forests, or the brown,
376 WINTER.
or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here
and there, where the agitated surface of the river
is exposed, the blue-black water. That dark-
eyed water, especially where I see it at right
angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the
first sign of spring ? How its darkness contrasts
with the general lightness of the winter ! It
has more life in it than any part of the earth s
surface. It is where one of the arteries of the
earth is palpable, visible. In winter not only
some creatures, but the very earth is partially
dormant. Vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some
extent, cease to flow. Therefore when I see the
water exposed in mid -winter, it is as if I saw a
skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if
the woodchuck consoled himself, and snuffed the
air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted.
It excites me to see early in the spring that
black artery leaping once more through the snow-
clad town. All is tumult and life there. . . .
Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes near
est to the surface and runs swiftest, there it
shows itself soonest, and you may see its pulse
beat. There are the wrists, temples of the earth
where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living
waters, not the dead earth. . . . Returning just
before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be
green, and a rose color to be reflected from the
low snow patches. I see the color from the
WINTER. 377
snow first where there is some shade, as where
the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice
and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge
when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or
twilight then is necessary, umbra mixed with
the reflected sun. Off Holden wood where the
low rays fall on the river through the fringe of
the wood, the patches are not rose color, but a
very dark purple, like a grape, and thus there
are all degrees from pure white to black. As I
cross Hubbard s broad meadow, the snow patches
are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the
petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cran
berry juice. . . .
I walk over a smooth green sea or sequor,
the sun just disappearing in the cloudless hori
zon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple
as the petals of a flower. It would not be more
enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of
the sunset sky. And, by the way, this is but a
sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same
law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here
the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen
vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between
them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth.
You have seen those purple, fortunate isles in
the sunset heavens, and that green and amber
sky between them. Would you believe that you
could ever walk amid those isles ? You can on
378 WINTER.
many a winter evening. I have done so a hun
dred times.
Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and
are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon
they, as it were, meei and are seen to be
one. . . .
We have such a habit of looking away that
we see not what is around us. How few are
aware that in winter, when the earth is covered
with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset
sky is double. The one is on the earth around
us, the other in the horizon.
Feb. 13, 1838. It is hard to subject ourselves
to an influence. It must steal upon us when we
expect it not, and its work be all done ere we
are aware of it. If we make advances, it is shy ;
if, when we feel its presence, we presume to pry
into its freemasonry, it vanishes, and leaves us
alone in our folly.
All fear of the world or consequences is
swallowed up in a manly anxiety to do truth
justice.
Feb. 13, 1840. An act of integrity is to an act
of duty what the French verb etre is to devoir.
Duty is that which devrait etre. Duty belongs
to the understanding, but genius is not dutiful.
. . . The perfect man has both genius and
talent ; the one is his head, the other, his foot.
By one, he is ; by the other, he lives.
WINTER. 379
The consciousness of man is the consciousness
of God, the end of the world.
The very thrills of genius are disorganizing.
The body is never quite acclimated to its atmos
phere, but how often succumbs, and goes into a
decline.
Feb. 13, 1841. By the truthfulness of our
story to-day, we help explain ourselves for all
our life henceforth. How we hamper and belay
ourselves by the least exaggeration. The truth
is God s concern ; he will sustain it. But who
can afford to maintain a lie ? We have taken
away one of the pillars of Hercules, and must
support the world on our shoulders, who might
have walked freely upon it.
Feb. 13, 1851. Skated to Sudbury. A beau
tiful summer-like day. The meadows were
frozen just enough to bear. Examined now the
fleets of ice flakes close at hand. They are a
very singular and interesting phenomenon which
I do not remember to have seen. I should say
that when the water was frozen about as thick
as pasteboard, a violent gust had here and there
broken it up, and while the wind and waves held
it on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in
firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were, for
the most part, turned one way, i. e., standing on
one side, you saw only their edges, on another,
the N. E. or S. W., their sides. They were com-
880 WINTER.
monly of a triangular form, like a shoulder-of-
mutton (?) sail, slightly scalloped, like shells.
They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel
fishers under a press of sail, careering before a
smacking breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind
had reduced them to the thinness of writing
paper, and they fluttered and rustled and tin
kled merrily. I skated through them and scat
tered their wrecks around. Every half mile or
mile, as you skate up the river, you see these
crystal fleets. . . .
Again I saw to-day half a mile off in Sud-
bury a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I
prophesied that I should find traces of the In
dians. When within a dozen rods, I distin
guished the foundation of a lodge, and merely
passing over it, I saw many fragments of the
arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished
these localities half a mile off, gone forward, and
picked up arrowheads.
Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury,
quite open and exposed, the skunk - cabbage
spathes above water. The tops of the spathes
were frost-bitten, but the fruit sound. There
was one partly expanded, the first flower of the
season, for it is a flower. I doubt if there is a
month without its flower. ....
In society, in the best institutions of men, I
remark a certain precocity. When we should
WINTER. 381
be growing children, we are already little men.
Infants as we are, we make haste to be weaned
from our great mother s breast, and cultivate our
parts by intercourse with one another. ... I
would not have every man, nor every part of a
man, cultivated any more than I would have
every acre of earth cultivated. Some must be
preparing a mould by the annual decay of the
forests which they sustain.
Feb. 13, 1852. Color, which is the poet s
wealth, is so expensive, that most take to mere
outline or pencil sketches, and become men of
science.
Feb. 13, 1855. ... The tracks of partridges
are more remarkable in this snow than usual,
it is so light, being, at the same time, a foot
deep. ... I see where many have dived into
the snow, apparently last night, on the side of a
shrub oak hollow. In four places they have
passed quite underneath it for more than a
foot ; in one place, eighteen inches. They ap
pear to have dived or burrowed into it, then
passed along a foot or more underneath, and
squatted there, perhaps with their heads out.
... I scared one from its hole only half a rod
in front of me, now at 11 A. M. ... It is evi
dently a hardy bird, and in the above respects,
too, is like the rabbit, which squats under a brake
or bush in the snow. I see the traces of the
382 WINTER.
latter in hollows in the snow in such places, their
forms. . . .
One of these pigweeds in the yard lasts the
snowbirds all winter. After every snow-storm,
they revisit it. How inexhaustible their granary.
To resume the subject of partridges, looking
farther in an open place . . . amid the shrub
oaks and low pitch pines, I found as many as
twenty or thirty places where partridges had
lodged in the snow apparently the last night or
the night before. You could see commonly
where their bodies had first struck the snow, and
furrowed it for a foot or two, twenty-six inches
wide, then entered and gone underneath two
feet, and rested at the farther end. ... Is it
not likely that they remain quite under the
snow there, and do not put their heads out till
ready to start? They do not go under deep,
and the gallery they make is mostly filled up
behind them, leaving only a thin crust above.
Then invariably just beyond this resting place,
you could see the marks made by their wings
when they took their departure. These distinct
impressions made by their wings on the pure
snow, so common on all hands, though the bird
that made it is gone, and there is no trace
beyond, affect me like some mystic Oriental sym
bol, the winged globe or what not, as if made by
a spirit. In some places you would see a furrow
WINTER. 383
and hollow in the snow where there was no
track for rods around, as if a large snow-ball or
cannon-ball had struck it, where apparently the
birds had not paused in their flight. It is evi
dently a regular thing with them thus to lodge
in the snow.
Feb. 13, 1859. p. M. On ice to Fair Haven
Pond. . . . The yellowish ice which froze yes
terday and last night is thickly and evenly
strewn with fibrous frost crystals very much like
bits of asbestos, an inch or more long, sometimes
arranged like a star or rosette, one for every
inch or two. ... I think this is the vapor from
the water which found its way up through the
ice, and froze in the night. It is sprinkled like
some kind of grain, and is in certain places
much more thickly strewn, as where a little snow
shows itself above the ice. The old ice is cov
ered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch
deep, from which as I walk toward the sun, this
perfectly clear, bright afternoon at half -past
three o clock, the colors of the rainbow are re
flected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if
the dust of diamonds and other precious stones
were spread all around. The blue and red pre
dominate. Though I distinguish these colors
everywhere toward the sun, they are so much
more abundantly reflected to me from two direc
tions that I see two distinct rays or arms, so to
884 WINTER.
call them, of this rainbow-like dust stretching
away from me and about half a dozen feet wide,
the two arms including an angle of about 60.
When I look from the sun, I see merely daz
zling white points. I can easily see some of these
dazzling grains fifteen or twenty rods distant on
any side, though the facet which reflects the
light cannot be more than a tenth or twelfth of
an inch at most. Yet I might easily, and com
monly do, overlook all this.
Winter comes to make walking possible where
there was no walking in summer. Not till win
ter can we take possession of the whole of our
territory. I have three great highways raying
out from one centre which is near my door. I
may walk down the main river, or up either of
its two branches. Could any avenues be con
trived more convenient ? With the river I am
not compelled to walk in the tracks of horses.
Never is there so much light in the air as in
one of these bright winter afternoons when all
the earth is covered with new-fallen snow, and
there is not a cloud in the sky. The sky is
much the darkest side, like the bluish lining of
an egg - shell. With this white earth beneath,
and that spotless, skimmed-milk sky above him,
man is but a black speck inclosed in a white
egg-shell.
Sometimes, in our prosaic moods, life appears
WINTER. 385
to us but a certain number more of days like
those we have lived, to be cheered not by more
friends and friendship, but probably fewer and
less, as perchance we anticipate the end of this
day before it is done, close the shutters, and,
with a cheerless resignation, commence the bar
ren evening whose fruitless end we clearly see.
"We despondingly think that all of life which is
left is only this experience repeated a certain
number of times, and so it would be, if it were
not for the faculty of imagination.
The wonderful stillness of a winter day ! the
sources of sound are, as it were, frozen up.
Scarcely a tinkling rill of it is to^e heard.
When we listen, we hear only tha>^ound of the
surf of our internal sea rismg ancLxwelling in
our ears as in two sea-sheltsT Ijrfs the sabbath
of the year, stillness audible^or at most we hear
the ice belching and craeiuing, as if struggling
for utterance.
A transient acquaintance with any phenom
enon is not sufficient to make it completely the
subject of your muse. You must be so conver
sant with it as to remember it, and be reminded
of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair
and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by
the imagination.
Feb. 13, 1860. ... It is surprising what a
variety of distinct colors the winter can show us,
386 WINTER.
using but few pigments. The principal charm
of a winter walk over ice is perhaps the pecul
iar and pure colors exhibited. There is the red
of the sunset sky and of the snow at evening,
and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in
sun-dogs.
The blue of the sky, and of the ice and water
reflected, and of shadows on snow.
The yellow of the sun, and the morning and
evening sky, and of the sedge (or straw color,
bright when lit on the edge of ice at even
ing), and all these three colors in hoar frost
crystals.
Then there is the purple of the snow in drifts
or on hills, of the mountains, and the clouds at
evening.
The green of evergreen woods, of the ice and
water, and of the sky toward evening.
The orange of the sky at evening.
The white of snow and clouds, and the black
of clouds, of water agitated, and water saturat
ing thin snow or ice.
The russet, and brown, gray, etc., of decid
uous woods.
The tawny of the bare earth.
I suspect that the green and rose (or purple)
are not noticed on ice and snow unless it is
pretty cold, and perhaps there is less greenness
of the ice now than in December when the days
WINTER. 387
were shorter. The ice now may be too old and
white. . . . The sun being in a cloud, partly ob
scured, I see a very dark purple tinge on the flat
drifts on the ice, earlier than usual, and when
afterward the sun comes out below the cloud, I
see no purple nor rose. Hence it seems that the
twilight has as much or more to do with this
phenomenon, supposing the sun to be low, than
the slight angle of its rays with the horizon.
Always you have to contend with the stupidity
of men. It is like a stiff soil, a hard pan. If
you go deeper than usual, you are sure to meet
with a pan made harder even by the super
ficial cultivation. The stupid you have always
with you. Men are more obedient at first to
words than to ideas. They mind names more
than things. Read them a lecture on " Educa
tion," naming the subject, and they will think
they have heard something important, but call
it " Transcendentalism," and they will think it
moonshine. Or halve your lecture, and put a
psalm at the beginning and a prayer at the
end of it, and they will pronounce it good with
out thinking.
The Scripture rule, " Unto him that hath,
shall be given," is true of composition. The
more you have thought and written on a given
theme, the more you can still write. Thought
breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
388 WINTER.
Feb. 14, 1840. ... A very meagre natural
history suffices to make me a child. Qnly their
names and genealogy make me love fishes. I
would know even the number of their fin rays,
and how many scales compose the lateral line.
I fancy I am amphibious and swim in all the
brooks and pools in the neighborhood, with the
perch and bream, or doze under the pads of our
river amid the winding aisles and corridors
formed by their stems, with the stately pick
erel.
Feb. 14, 1841. I am confined to the house
by bronchitis, and so seek to content myself with
that quiet and serene .life there is in a warm
corner by the fireside, and see the sky through
the chimney -top. Sickness should not be al
lowed to extend farther than the body. We
need only to retreat farther within us, to pre
serve uninterrupted the continuity of serene
hours to the end of our lives. As soon as I find
my chest is not of tempered steel, and heart of
adamant, I bid good-by to them and look out
for a new nature. I will be liable to no acci
dents.
I shall never be poor while I can command a
still hour in which to take leave of my sin.
Feb. 14, 1851. Consider the farmer who is
commonly regarded as the healthiest man. He
may be the toughest, but he is not the healthiest.
WINTER. 389
He has lost his elasticity. He can neither run
nor jump. Health is the free use and command
of all our faculties, and equal development.
His is the health of the ox, an overworked buf
falo. His joints are stiff. The resemblance is
true even in particulars. He is cast away in a
pair of cowhide boots, and travels at an ox s
pace. ... It would do him good to be thoroughly
shampooed to make him supple. His health is
an insensibility to all influence. But only the
healthiest man in the world is sensible to the
finest influence ; he who is affected by more or
less electricity in the air.
We shall see but a little way, if we require
to understand what we see. How few things
can a man measure with the tape of his under
standing ! How many greater things might he
be seeing in the mean while ! One afternoon in
the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond
with its island a<nd meadow ; between the island
and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water
in the lee of the island and two ducks sailing
on it, and something more I saw which cannot
easily be described, which made me say to my
self that the landscape could not be improved.
I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I
do not know what these things can be. I be
gin to see such objects only when I leave off
understanding them, and afterwards remember
390 WINTER.
them. I did not appreciate them before. But
I get no farther than this. How adapted these
forms and colors to onr eyes,- a meadow and its
islands. What are these things? Yet the
hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is
so reserved. We are made to love the river and
the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water.
Feb. 14, 1852. ... I hate that my motive
for visiting a friend should be that I want so
ciety, that it should lie in my poverty and weak
ness, and not in his and my riches and strength.
His friendship should make me strong enough
to do without him.
Feb. 14, 1854. p. M. Down railroad. A moist,
thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain.
The telegraph resounds at every post. The finest
strain from the American lyre. In Stow s wood
by the deep Cut, hear the quah quah of the
white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch. I went
up the bank and stood by the, fence. A little
family of titmice gathered about me searching
for their food both on the ground and on the
trees with great industry and intentness, now
and then pursuing each other. There were two
nuthatches at least talking to each other. One
hung with his head down on a large pitch pine
pecking the bark for a long time, leaden blue
above, with a black cap and white breast. It
uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp . . .
WINTER. 391
creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to
be answered by a baser and louder quah quah
from the other. A downy woodpecker with the
red spot on his hind head and his cassock open
behind, showing his white robe, kept up an in
cessant loud tapping on another pitch pine.
All at once, an active little brown creeper makes
its appearance, a small, rather slender bird with
a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white
beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree
and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts
to the bottom of a new tree, and repeats the
same movement, not resting long in one place,
or on one tree. These birds are all feeding and
flitting along together, but the chickadees are
the most numerous and the most confiding. I
notice that three of the four kinds thus associ
ated, viz., the chickadee, nuthatch, and wood
pecker, have black crowns, at least the first two,
very conspicuous black caps. I cannot but
think that this sprightly association and readi
ness to burst into song have to do with the pros
pect of spring, more light, and warmth, and
thawing weather. The titmice keep up an in
cessant, faint, tinkling tchip ; now and then
one utters a brief day-day-day, and once or twice
one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel,
startling, and spring-like. Beside this I heard
the distant crowing of cocks, and the divine
392 WINTER.
humming of the telegraph, all spring-promising
sounds. The chickadee has quite a variety of
notes. The phcebe one I did not hear to-day.
Feb. 14, 1856. . . . How impatient, how ram
pant, how precocious these osiers ! They have
hardly made two shoots from the sand in as
many springs, when silvery catkins burst out
along them, and anon, golden blossoms and
downy seeds, spreading their race with incredi
ble rapidity. Thus they multiply and clan to
gether. Thus they take advantage even of the
railroad, which elsewhere disturbs and invades
their domains. May I ever be in as good spirits
as a willow. They never despair. Is there
no moisture longer in Nature which they can
transmute into sap ? They are emblems of
youth, joy, and everlasting life. Scarcely is
their growth restrained by winter, but their
silvery down peeps forth in the warmest days in
January (?).
Feb. 14, 1857. ... It is a fine, somewhat
spring-like day. The ice is softening so that
skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars
are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the
thermometer in the shade N. of house standing
at 42. So it appears that they must often
thaw in the course of the winter and find noth
ing to eat.
Feb. 15, 1840. The good seem to inhale a
WINTER. 393
generous atmosphere, and to be bathed in a more
precious light than other men. Accordingly,
Virgil describes the sedes beatas thus,
Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo : Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
Feb. 15, 1851. Alas ! alas ! when my friend
begins to deal in confessions, breaks silence,
makes a theme of friendship (which then is al
ways something past), and descends to merely
human relations. As long as there is a spark of
love remaining, cherish that alone. Only that
can be kindled into a flame. I thought that
friendship, that love was possible between us.
I thought that we had not withdrawn very far
asunder. But now that my friend rashly,
thoughtlessly, profanely speaks, recognizing the
distance between us, that distance seems in
finitely increased. Of our friends we do not
incline to speak, to complain to others ; we
would not disturb the foundations of confidence
that may still be.
Why should we not still continue to live with
the intensity and rapidity of infants? Is not
the world, are not the heavens, as unfathomed
as ever ? Have we exhausted any joy, any sen
timent ?
Feb. 15, 1852. Perhaps I am descended from
the Northman named " Thorer, the Dog- footed."
Thorer Hund, to judge from his name, belonged
394 WINTER.
to the same family. " He was one of the most
powerful men in the north." Thorer is one of
the most common names in the chronicles of the
Northmen, if not the most so.
Feb. 15, 1855. . . . All day a steady, warm,
imprisoning rain, carrying off the snow, not un
musical on my roof. It is a rare time for the
student and reader who cannot go abroad in the
p. M., provided he can keep awake, for we are
wont to be as drowsy as cats in such weather.
Without, it is not walking, but wading. It is so
long since I have heard it, that the steady rush
ing, soaking sound of the rain on the shingles is
musical. The fire needs no replenishing, and
we save our fuel. It seems like a distant fore
runner of spring. It is because I am allied to
the elements that the sound of the rain is thus
soothing to me. This sound sinks into my
spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me
of the season when snow an d ice will be no
more, when the earth will be thawed, and drink
up the rain as fast as it falls.
Feb. 15, 1858. To Cambridge and Boston.
Saw at a menagerie a Canada lynx, said to have
been taken at the White Mountains. It looked
much like a monstrous gray cat standing on stilts,
with its tail cut to five inches, a tuft of hair on
each ear, and a ruff under the throat.
Feb. 15, 1861. ... A kitten is so flexible
WINTER. 395
that she is almost double. The hind parts are
equivalent to another kitten with which the fore
part plays. She does not discover that her tail
belongs to her till you tread upon it. How elo
quent she can be with her tail. She jumps into
a chair and then stands on her hind legs to look
out the window, looks steadily at objects far
and near, first gazing this side, then that, for
she loves to look out a window as much as any
gossip. Ever and anon she bends back her ears
to hear what is going on within the room, and all
the while her eloquent tail is reporting the prog
ress and success of her survey by speaking ges
tures. . . . Then what a delicate hint she can
give with her tail, passing perhaps underneath
as you sit at table, and letting the tip of her
tail just touch your legs, as much as to say I am
here and ready for that milk or meat, though
she may not be so forward as to look round at
you when she emerges. Only skin deep lies
the feral nature of the cat unchanged still. I
just had the misfortune to rock on to our cat s
legs, as she was lying playfully spread out under
my chair. Imagine the sound that arose, and
which was excusable, but what will you say to
the fierce growls and flashing eyes with which
she met me for a quarter of an hour there
after. No tiger in its jungle could have been
savager.
396 WINTER.
Feb. 16, 1841. For how slight an accident
shall two noble souls wait to bring them to
gether.
Feb. 16, 1852. It is interesting to meet an
ox with handsomely spreading horns. There is
a great variety of sizes and forms, though one
horn commonly matches the other. I am willing
to turn out for those that spread their branches
wide. Large and spreading horns, I fancy, in
dicate a certain vegetable force and naturaliza
tion in the wearer ; they soften and ease off the
distinction between the animal and the vegeta
ble, the unhorned animals and the trees. . . .
The deer that run in the woods, as the moose,
for instance, carry perfect trees on their heads.
The French call them " bois." No wonder there
are fables of centaurs and the like. No wonder
there is a story of a hunter who when his bullets
failed fired cherry stones into the heads of his
game and so trees sprouted out of them, and the
hunter refreshed himself with the cherries. It
is a perfect piece of mythology which belongs to
these days. Oxen, which are deanimalized, to
some extent, approach nearer to the vegetable,
perchance, than bulls and cows, and hence their
bulky bodies, and large and spreading horns.
Nothing more natural than that a deer should
appear with a tree growing out of his head.
Feb. 16, 1854. By this time in the winter I
WINTER. 397
do not look for those clear sparkling mornings
and delicate leaf frosts which seem to belong to
the earlier part of the winter, as if the air were
now somewhat tarnished and debauched, had
lost its virgin purity.
Every judgment and action of a man qualifies
every other, i. e., corrects our estimation of every
other, as, for instance, a man s idea of immor
tality who is a member of a church, or his praise
of you coupled with his praise of those whom
you do not esteem. For, in this sense, a man is
awfully consistent above his own consciousness.
All a man s strength and all his weakness go to
make up the authority of any particular opinion
which he may utter. ... If he is your friend,
you may have to consider that he loves you, but
perchance he also loves gingerbread. . . .
Columella, after saying that many authors
had believed that the climate, qualitatem coeli
statumque, was changed by lapse of time, longo
cevi situ, refers to Hipparchus as having given
out that the time would be when the poles of the
earth would be moved from their places, tempus
fore quo cardines mundi loco moverentur ; and
as confirmatory of this, he, Columella, goes on to
say that the vine and olive flourish now in some
places where formerly they failed. He gives the
names of about fifty authors who had treated
de rusticis rebus before him.
398 WINTER.
Feb. 16, 1857. ... I perceive that some com
monly talented persons are enveloped and con
fined by a certain crust of manners, which,
though it may sometimes be a fair and trans
parent enamel, yet only repels and saddens the
beholder, since by its rigidity it seems to re
press all further expansion. They are viewed
as at a distance, like an insect under a tumbler.
They have, as it were, prematurely hardened
both seed and shell, and this has severely taxed,
if not put a period to, the life of the plant. This
is to stand upon your dignity. . . . Such per
sons are after all but hardened sinners in a mild
sense. The pearl is a hardened sinner. Man
ners get to be human parchment, in which sensi
ble books are often bound and honorable titles
engrossed, though they may be very stiff and dry.
Feb. 16, 1859. From the entrance of the mill
road, I look back through the sunlight, this soft
afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny
Dugan s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum
above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel
sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth
so far beneath. They are like a flaky crust of
the earth, a more ethereal, terebinthine, ever
green earth. It occurs to me that my eyes rest
on them with the same pleasure as do those of
the henhawk which has been nestled in them,
eyes nibble the piny sierra which makes
WINTER. 399
the horizon s edge as a hungry man nibbles a
cracker. The henhawk and the pine are friends.
The same thing which keeps the henhawk in the
woods, away from cities, keeps me here. That
bird settles with confidence on a white pine top,
and not upon your weather-cock. That bird
will not be poultry of yours, lays no eggs for
you, forever hides its nest. Though willed or
wild, it is not willful in its wildness. The un-
sympathizing man regards the wildness of some
animals, their strangeness to him, as a sin, as if
all their virtue consisted in their tamableness.
He has always a charge in his gun ready for
their extermination. What we call wildness is
a civilization other than our own. The hen-
hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly
shelter and support of the pine. It will not
consent to walk in the barnyard, but it loves to
soar above the clouds. It has its own way and
is beautiful when we would fain subject it to our
will. So any surpassing work of art is strange
and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself.
No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is
wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted
or above persecution. It can never be poet
laureate, to say, " Pretty Poll," and " Polly want
a cracker."
Feb. 17, 1841. Our work should be fitted to
and lead on the time, as bud, flower, and fruit
400 WINTER.
lead the circle of the seasons. The mechanic
works no longer than his labor will pay for
lights, fuel, and shop rent. Would it not be
well for us to consider if our deed will warrant
the expense of nature ? Will it maintain the
sun s light ? Our actions do not use time in
dependently, as the bud does. They should con
stitute its lapse. It is their room. But they
shuffle after and serve the hour.
Feb. 17, 1852. Perhaps the peculiar attrac
tiveness of those western vistas was partly ow
ing to the shortness of the days, when we natu
rally look to the heavens and make the most of
the little light, when we live an arctic life, when
the woodchopper s axe reminds us of twilight at
three o clock in the afternoon, when the morning
and the evening literally make the whole day,
when we travel as it were through the portals
of the night, and the way is narrow as well as
, blocked with snow, when, too, the sun has the
least opportunity to fill the air with vapor. . . .
If you would read books on botany, go to the
fathers of the science. Read Linnaaus at once,
and come down from him as far as you please.
I lost much time reading the florists. It is
remarkable how little the mass of those interested
in botany are acquainted with Linnaeus. I
doubt if his " Philosophia Botanica," which Rous
seau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, has
WINTER. 401
ever been translated into English. It is simpler,
more easy to understand, than any of the hundred
manuals to which it has given birth. A few
pages of cuts representing the different parts of
plants, with their botanical names attached, are
worth whole volumes of explanation. Accord
ing to the classification of LinnaBus, I come
under the head of Miscellaneous Botanophilists.
" Botanophili sunt qui varia de vegetabilibus
tradiderunt, licet ea non proprie ad scientiam
Botanicam spectant,"
Feb. 17, 1854. p. M. To Gowing s Swamp.
. . . The mice tracks are very amusing. It is
surprising how numerous they are, and yet I
rarely see a mouse. They must be nocturnal in
their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored
with them. I see, too, where they have run
over the ice on the swamp (there is a mere
sugaring of snow on it), ever trying to make
an entrance, to get beneath it. You see deep
and distinct channels in the snow in some places,
as if a whole colony had long traveled to
and fro in them, a highway, a well-known trail,
but suddenly they will come to an end. And
yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for
you see where the single traveler who did it all
has nimbly hopped along, as if suddenly scared,
making but a slight impression, squirrel-like, in
the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will
402 WINTER.
make a channel for a short distance. . . . I sus
pect that the mice sometimes build their nests in
bushes from the foundation, for . . . where I
found two mice nests last fall, I find one begun
with a very few twigs and some moss, close by
where the others were, at the same height, and
also on Prinos bushes, plainly the work of mice
wholly.
Feb. 18, 1838. ... I had not been out long
to-day when it seemed that a new spring was
already born ; not quite weaned, it is true, but
verily entered upon existence. Nature struck up
" the same old song in the grass," despite eight
een inches of snow. . . .
Feb. 18, 1840. All romance is grounded on
friendship. What is this rural, this pastoral,
this poetic life but its invention ? Does not the
moon shine for Endymion? Smooth pastures
and mild airs are for some Coridon and Phyllis.
Paradise belongs to Adam and Eve. Plato s
Republic is governed by Platonic love.
Feb. 18, 1841. . . . My recent growth does
not appear in any visible new talent ; but its
deed will enter into my gaze when I look into
the sky or vacancy. It will help me to consider
ferns and everlasting.
Man is like a tree which is limited to no age,
but grows as long as it has its root in the
ground. We have only to live in the alburnum,
and not in the old wood.
WINTER. 403
A man is the hydrostatic paradox, the coun
terpoise of the system. You have studied flowers
and birds cheaply enough, but you must lay your
self out to buy him.
Feb. 18, 1842. ... I have a commonplace
book for facts, and another for poetry, but I find
it difficult always to preserve the vague distinc
tion which I had in my mind, for the most in
teresting and beautiful facts are so much the
more poetry, and that is their success. They are
translated from earth to heaven. I see that if
my facts were sufficiently vital and significant,
perhaps transmuted more into the substance of
the human mind, I should need but one book of
poetry to contain them all.
It is impossible for the same person to see
things from the poet s point of view and that of
the man of science. The poet s second love may
be science (not his first), when use has worn off
the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a
condition of mind at which others arrive in mid
dle age by the decay of their poetic faculties.
Feb. 18, 1854. ... It is a little affecting to
walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer
lichens here and there amid the snow, and re
member that erelong we shall find violets also in
their midst. What an odds the season makes !
The birds know it ; whether a rose-tinted water
lily is sailing amid the pads, or neighbor Hob-
404 WINTER.
son is getting out his ice with a cross-cut saw,
while his oxen are eating their stalks. I noticed
that the ice which Garrison cut the other day con
tained the lily pads and stems within it. How
different their environment now from when the
queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface,
exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects ! . . .
What a contrast between the upper and un
der side of many leaves, the indurated and col
ored upper side, and the tender, more or less
colorless under side, male and female, even
when they are almost equally exposed. The un
der side is commonly white, however, as turned
away from the light toward the earth. Many in
which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute
leave*s, like the delicate and beautiful androm-
eda polifolia, the ledum, kalmia glauca. . . .
The handsome lanceolate leaves of the androm-
eda polifolia, dark, but pure and uniform dull
red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate
bluish-white beneath, deserve to be copied on
works of art.
Feb. 18, 1857. ... p. M. The frost out of
the ground and the ways settled in many places.
... I am excited by this wonderful air, and go
listening for the note of the bluebird or other
comer. The very grain of the air seems to have
undergone a change, and is ready to split into
the form of the bluebird s warble. Methinks if
WINTER. 405
it were visible, or I could cast up some fine dust
which would betray it, it would take a corre
sponding shape. The bluebird does not come
till the air consents, and his wedge will enter
easily. . . .
What a poem is this of spring, so often re
peated ! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of
as the Spring of such a year, that Fytte of the
glorious epic.
Fel. 18, 1860. ... I think the most impor
tant requisite in describing an animal is to be
sure that you give its character and spirit, for
in that you have, without error, the sum and ef
fect of all its parts, known and unknown. You
must tell what it is to man. Surely the most
important part of an animal is its anima, its
vital spirit, on which is based its character, and
all the particulars by which it most concerns us.
Yet most scientific books which treat of animals
leave this out altogether, and what they describe
are, as it were, phenomena of dead matter.
What is most interesting in a dog, for instance,
is his attachment to his master, his intelligence,
courage, and the like, and not his anatomical
structure, and even many habits which affect us
less. If you have undertaken to write the biog
raphy of an animal, you must present to us the
living creature, i. e., a result which no man can
understand. He can only, in his degree, report
406 WINTER.
the impression made by it on him. Science, in
many departments of Natural History, does not
pretend to go beyond the shell, i. e., it does not
get to animated nature at all. A history of
animated nature must itself be animated. The
ancients, one would say, with their Gorgons,
Sphinxes, Satyrs, Mantichora, etc., could imag
ine more than existed, while the moderns can
not imagine so much as exists.
We are as often injured as benefited by our
systems, for, in fact, no human system is a tiue
one. A name is at most a convenience, and
carries no information with it. As soon as I
begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I
forget its name. When we have learned to dis
tinguish creatures, the sooner we forget their
names the better, so far as any true apprecia
tion of them is concerned. I think, therefore,
that the best and most harmless names are those
which are an imitation of the voice or note of an
animal, as they are the most poetic ones. But
the name adheres only to the accepted and con
ventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to
the real one. There is always something ridicu
lous in the name of a great man, as if he were
named John Smith. The name is convenient in
communicating with others, but it is not to be
remembered when I communicate with myself.
If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in
WINTER. 407
vogne in the last century, how foolish and use
less they are seen to be, and yet we use equally
absurd ones with faith to-day.
Feb. 19, 1841. A truly good book . . .
teaches me better than to read it. I must soon
lay it down, and commence living on its hint.
I do not see how any can be written more, but
this is the last effusion of genius. ... It is
slipping out of my fingers while I read. It
creates no atmosphere in which it may be pe
rused, but one in which its teachings may be
practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I
lay it down with the least regret. What I began
by reading, I must finish by acting. So I can
not stay to hear a good sermon, and applaud
at the conclusion, but shall be half-way to Ther-
mopylaB before that.
We linger in manhood to tell the dreams of
our childhood, and they are half forgotten ere
we acquire the faculty of expressing them.
It is the unexplored grandeur of the storm
which keeps up the spirits of the traveler.
When I contemplate a hard and bare life in the
woods, I find my last consolation in its untri vial-
ness. Shipwreck is less distressing because the
breakers do not trifle with us. We are resigned
as long as we recognize the sober and solemn
mystery of nature. The dripping mariner finds
consolation and sympathy in the infinite sublim-
408 WINTER.
ity o the storm. It is a moral force as well
as he. With courage he can lay down his life
on the strand, for it never turned a deaf ear to
him, nor has he ever exhausted its sympathy.
In the love of narrow souls I make many
short voyages, but in vain. I find no sea room
But in great souls, I sail before the wind without
a watch, and never reach the shore.
Feb. 19, 1852. The sky appears broader
now than it did. The day has opened its eye
lids wider. The lengthening of the days,
commenced a good while ago, is a kind of fore
runner of the spring. Of course it is then
that the ameliorating cause begins to work.
To White Pond. . . . The strains from my
muse are as rare nowadays or of late years as
the notes of birds in the winter, the faintest
occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the
woodpecker kind, or the harsh jay, or the crow.
It never melts into a song, only the day-day-day
of an inquisitive titmouse.
Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts
about the walls and fences, and beneath the
snow the frozen ground, and men are com
pelled to deposit the summer s provision in
burrows in the earth, like the ground squirrel.
Many creatures, daunted by the prospect, mi
grated in the fall, but man remains, and walks
over the frozen snow crust, and over the stiff-
WINTER. 409
ened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his
summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest
terms. There is no home for you now in this
freezing wind, but in that shelter which you pre
pared in the summer. You steer straight across
the fields to that in season. I can with difficulty
tell when I am over the river. There is a simi
lar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in
the summer, and gathered flowers, and rested on
the grass by the brook side in the shade, now
no grass, nor flowers, nor brook, nor shade, but
cold unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile,
and no place to sit. Look at White Pond, that
crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous
shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous
perch and shiners rose to the surface, and where
with difficulty you made your way along the
pebbly shore in a summer afternoon, to the
bathing place. Now you stalk rapidly across
where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more
level snow field than usual, furrowed by the
wind ; its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore
all hidden and forgotten, and you would shudder
at the thought of wetting your feet.
A fine display of the northern lights aften ten
P. M., flashing up from all parts of the horizon
to the zenith, where there was a kind of core
formed, stretching S.S.E. N.N.W., surrounded
by what looked like a permanent white cloud,
410 WINTER.
which, however, was very variable in form. The
light flashes or trembles upward, as if it were
the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist
in the upper atmosphere.
Feb. 19, 1854. ... To Fair Haven by river,
back by railroad. . . . The large moths appar
ently love the neighborhood of water, and are
wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of
the meadow and river, places more or less inacces
sible to men, at least. I saw a button-bush with
what, at first sight, looked like the open pods
of the locust or of the water asclepias, attached.
They were the light, ash-colored cocoons of the
Attacus Promethea, with the completely with
ered and faded leaves wrapped around them,
carefully and admirably secured to the twigs by
fine silk wound round the leaf stalk and the twig.
They add nothing to the strength of the co
coon, being deciduous, but aid in deception.
They are taken at a little distance for a few
curled and withered leaves left on. Though the
particular twigs on which you find some "co
coons may never, or very rarely, retain any
leaves, there are enough leaves left on other
shrubs and trees to warrant the adoption of this
disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the
inference has in this case been drawn by some
mind, that as most other plants retain some
leaves, the walker will suspect these also to.
WINTER. 411
Each and all such disguises and other resources
remind us that not merely some poor worm s
instinct, as we call it, but the mind of the uni
verse rather, which we share, has been intended
upon each particular object. All the wit in the
world was brought to bear on each case to secure
its end. It was long ago in a full senate of all
intellects determined how cocoons had best be
suspended. Kindred mind with mine, that ap
proves and admires, decided it so. ...
Much study, a weariness of the flesh ! Ah,
but did they not intend that we should read and
ponder, who covered the whole earth with alpha
bets, primers, or Bibles, coarse or fine print?
The very debris of the cliffs . . . are covered
with geographic lichens. No surface is per
mitted to be bare long. . . . Was not he who
creates lichens the abettor of Cadmus when
he invented letters ? Types almost arrange
themselves into words and sentences, as dust
arranges itself under the magnet. Print ! it is
a close-hugging lichen that forms on a favorable
surface, which paper offers. The linen gets
itself wrought into paper that the song of the
shirt may be printed oil it. Who placed us
with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic
world ?
Feb. 19, 1855. Many will complain of my
lectures that they are transcendental, can t under-
412 WINTER.
stand them. " Would you have us return to
the savage state ? " etc., etc., a criticism true
enough, it may be, from their point of view.
But the fact is, the earnest lecturer can speak
only to his like, and adapting himself to his
audience is a mere compliment which he pays
them. If you wish to know how I think, you
must endeavor to put yourself in my place. If
you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is
another affair.
Feb. 19, 1857. A man cannot be said to suc
ceed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Feb. 19, 1858. The traveler is defended and
calloused. He deals with surfaces, has a great
coat on ; but he who stays at home and writes
about homely things gives us naked and tender
thoughts and sentiments.
Feb. 20, 1840. The coward s hope is suspi
cion ; the hero s doubt, a sort of hope. The
gods neither hope nor doubt.
Feb. 20, 1841. When I am going out for an
evening, I arrange the fire in my stove so that I
do not fail to find a good one when I return,
though it would have engaged my frequent at
tention, present ; so that when I know I am to
be at home, I sometimes make believe that I
may go out to save trouble. And this is the art
of living, too, to leave our life in a condition to
go alone, and not to require a constant supervis-
WINTER. 413
ion. We will then sit down serenely to live, as
by the side of a stove.
When I sit in earnest, nothing must stand.
All must be sedentary with me.
I hear the faint sound of a viol and voices
from the neighboring cottage, and think to
myself, I will believe the muse only forever-
more. It assures me that no gleam which comes
over the serene soul is deceptive. It warns me
of a reality and substance of which the best
that I see is but the phantom and shadow. O
Music, thou tellest me of things of which mem
ory takes no heed; thy strains are whispered
aside from memory s ear. . . . Thou openest
all my senses to catch the least hint, and givest
me no thought. It would be good to sit at my
door of summer evenings forever, and hear thy
strains. Thou makest me to toy with speech,
or walk content without it. ... I am pleased to
think how ignorant and shiftless the wisest are.
My imperfect sympathies with my friend are
a cheerful, glimmering light in the valley.
Feb. 20, 1842. I never yet saw two men suf
ficiently great to meet as two. In proportion
as they are great, the differences are fatal, be
cause they are felt not to be partial, but total.
Frankness to him who is unlike me will lead to
the utter denial of him. . . . When two ap
proach to meet, they incur no petty dangers ;
414 WINTER.
they run terrible risks. Between the sincere
there will be no civilities. No greatness seems
prepared for the little decorums ; even savage
unmannerliness it meets from equal greatness.
My path hitherto has been like a road through
a diversified country, now climbing high moun
tains, then descending into the lowest vales.
From the summits I saw the heavens, from the
vales I looked up at the heights again. In pros
perity I remember God, or memory is one with
consciousness; in adversity I remember my own
elevation, and only hope to see God again. . . .
The death of friends should inspire us as
much as their lives. If they are great and rich
enough, they will leave consolation to the mourn
ers before the expenses of their funerals. It
will not be hard to part with worth, because it
is worthy. How can any good depart ? It does
not go and come, but we.
Feb. 20, 1856. P. M. Up Assabet. See a
broad and distinct otter trail made last night or
yesterday. It came out to the river through the
low woods N. of Pinxter swamp, making a very
conspicuous trail from seven to nine or ten inches
wide and three or four deep, with sometimes
singularly upright sides, as if a square timber
had been drawn along, but commonly rounded.
It made some short turns and zigzags, passed
under limbs which were only five inches above
WINTER. 415
the .snow, not over them, had apparently slid
down all banks and declivities, making a uni
form, broad, hollow trail there, without any
marks of its feet. On reaching the river, it had
come along under the bank, from time to time
looking into the crevices, where it might get
under the ice, sometimes ascending the bank and
sliding back. On level ground its trail had this
appearance
. . . tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four inches
apart, but sometimes there was no track of the
feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six. In
the last case there was a swelling in the outline
as above. ... It entered a hole under the ice
at Assabet spring, from which it has not issued.
Feb. 20, 1857. What is the relation between
a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody,
to whom, perchance, it is more charming and sig
nificant than to any one else ? Certainly they
are intimately related, and the one was made for
the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to
discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond
shore was affected, say partially disintegrated,
by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or
insect, I see that one could not be completely
described without describing the other. I am
that stone by the pond side.
What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-
416 WINTER.
time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible, ex
pedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ?
Feb. 20, 1859. Have just read k< Counter
parts, or the Cross of Love," by the author of
" Charles Auchester." It is very interesting, its
illustration of Love and Friendship, as showing
how much we can know of each other through
sympathy merely, without any of the ordinary
information. You know about a person who
deeply interests you more than you can be told.
A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody
else is insignificant, tells you more about that
one than words can. ... If he wished to con
ceal something from you, it would be apparent.
It is as if a bird told you. . . . Sometimes from
the altered manner of a friend which no cloak
can possibly conceal, we know that something
has happened, and what it was, all the essential
particulars, though it would be a long story to
tell, though it may involve the agency of four
or five persons, who never breathed it to you,
yet you are sure as if you detected all their
tracks in the wood. You are the more sure, be
cause, in the case of love, effects follow their
causes more inevitably than usual, this being a
controlling power.
How much the writer lives and endures in
coining before the public so often ! A few years
or books are with him equal to a long life of ex-
WINTER. 417
perience, suffering, etc. It is well if he does
not become hardened. He learns how to bear
contempt, and to despise himself. He makes,
as it were, a post-mortem examination of him
self before he is dead. Such is art.
Feb. 21, 1842. ... I must confess there is
nothing so strange to me as my own body. I
love any other piece of nature, almost, better.
I was always conscious of sounds in nature
which my ears could not hear, that I caught but
a prelude to a strain. She always retreats as
I advance. Away behind and behind is she
and her meaning. Will not this faith and ex
pectation make itself ears at length ? I never
saw to the end, nor heard to the end, but the
best part was unseen and unheard.
I am like a feather floating in the atmosphere.
On every side is depth unfathomable.
I have lived ill [of late] for the most part,
because too near myself. I have tripped myself
up, so that there was no progress for my own
narrowness. I cannot walk conveniently and
pleasantly but when I hold myself far off in
the horizon, but when the soul dilutes the body
and makes it passable. My soul and body have
tottered along together, . . . tripping and hinder
ing one another, like unpracticed Siamese twins.
They two should walk as one that no obstacle
may be nearer than the firmament.
418 WINTER.
There must be some narrowness in the soul
that compels one to have secrets.
Feb. 21, 1855. ... A clear air, with a north
westerly March-like wind, as yesterday. What
is the peculiarity in the air that both the in
valid in his chamber and the traveler on the
highway say, "These are perfect March days"?
The wind is rapidly drying up the earth, and
elevated sands already begin to look whitish.
How much light there is in the sky and on the
surface of the russet earth ! It is reflected in
a flood from all cleansed surfaces which rain and
snow have washed, from the railroad rails, the
mica on the rocks and the silvery latebrae of in
sects there, and I never saw the white houses
of the village more brightly white. Now look
for an early crop of arrowheads, for they will
shine. When I have entered the wooded hol
low on the east of the Deep Cut, it is novel and
pleasant to hear the sound of the dry leaves and
twigs, which have so long been damp and silent,
crackling again under my feet, though there is
still considerable snow along wall-sides, etc., and
to see the holes and galleries recently made by
the mice (?) in the fine withered grass of such
places. I see the peculiar softened blue sky of
spring over the tops of the pines, and when I
am sheltered from the wind I feel the warmer
sun of the season reflected from the withered
WINTER. 419
grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hol
low. . . . When the leaves on the forest floor
are dried and begin to rustle under such a sun
and wind as these, the news is told to how many
myriads of grubs that underlie them ! When
I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as
if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize
what was incredible to me before, that there is a
new life in nature beginning to awake. ... It
is whispered through all the aisles of the forest
that another spring is approaching. The wood
mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and
the chickadee passes the news along. We now
notice the snow on the mountains, because on
the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness con
trasts with the russet and darker hues of our
bare fields. I looked at the Peterboro mountains,
with my glass, from Fair Haven hill. I think
there can be no more arctic scene than these
mountains, on the edge of the horizon, completely
crusted over with snow, the sun shining on them,
seen through a telescope over bare russet fields
and dark forests, with perhaps a house on some
bare ridge seen against them. They look like
great loaves incrusted with pure white sugar, and
I think this must have been the origin of the
name " sugar-loaf " sometimes given to moun
tains, and not their form. We look thus from
russet fields into a landscape still sleeping under
420 WINTER.
the mantle of winter. The snow on the moun
tains has, in this case, a singular smooth and
crusty appearance, and by contrast you see even
single evergreens rising here and there above it ;
and where a promontory casts a shadow along
the mountain side, I saw what looked like a large
lake of misty, bluish water on the side of the
farther Peterboro mountain, its edges or shore
very distinctly defined. This I concluded was
the shadow of another part of the mountain,
and it suggested that in like manner what on
the surface of the moon is taken for water may
be shadows.
Feb. 21, 1860. ... It was their admiration
of nature that made the ancients attribute those
magnanimous qualities, which are surely to be
found in man, to the lion, as her masterpiece.
It is only by a readiness or preparedness to see
more than appears in a creature that we can
appreciate what is manifest.
Feb. 21, 1861. . . . This plucking and strip
ping of a pine cone is a business which he [the
squirrel] and his family understand perfectly.
. . . He does not prick his fingers, nor pitch his
whiskers, nor gnaw the solid cone any more
than he needs to. Having sheared off the twigs
and needles that may be in his way (for, like a
skillful wood-chopper, he first secures room and
verge enough), he neatly cuts off the stout stem
WINTER. 421
of the cone with a few strokes of his chisels,
and it is his. To be sure, he may let it fall to
the ground, and look down at it for a moment
curiously, as if it were not his. But he is tak
ing note where it lies, that he may add it to his
heap of a hundred more like it, and it is only so
much the more his for his seeming carelessness.
And when he comes to open it, observe how he
proceeds. He holds it in his hands a solid em
bossed cone, so hard it almost rings at the touch
of his teeth. He pauses for a moment, perhaps,
but it is not because he does not know how to
begin. He only listens to hear what is in the
wind. He knows better than to cut off the top,
and work his way downward against a cheval-d&&gt;
frise of advanced scales and prickles, or to gnaw
into the side for three quarters of an inch in the
face of many armed shields. He whirls it bot
tom upward in a twinkling, where the scales are
smallest and the prickles slight or none, and the
short stem is cut so close as not to be in his way,
and there he proceeds to cut through the thin
and tender bases of the scales, and each stroke
tells, laying bare at once a couple of seeds.
Thus he strips it as easily as if its scales were
chaff, and so rapidly, twirling it as he advances,
that you cannot tell how he does it till you drive
him off, and inspect his unfinished work. If
there ever was an age of the world when the
422 WINTER.
squirrels opened their cones at the wrong end, it
was not the golden age, at any rate.
Feb. 22, 1841. . . . Friends will be much
apart. They will respect more each other s
privacy than their communion, for therein is the
fulfillment of our high aims and the conclusion
of our arguments. That we know and would
associate with, not only has high intents, but goes
on high errands, and has much private business.
The hours my friend devotes to me were snatched
from a higher society. He is hardly a gift level
to me, but I have* to reach up to take it. ...
We have to go into retirement religiously,
and enhance our meeting by rarity and a degree
of unfamiliarity. Would you know why I see
thee so seldom, my friend ? In solitude I have
been making up a packet for thee.
Some actions which grow out of common but
natural relations affect me strangely, as some
times the behavior of a mother to her children.
So quiet and noiseless an action often moves me
more than many sounding exploits.
Feb. 22, 1852. . . . Every man will take
such views as he can afford to take. Views
one would think were the most expensive guests
to entertain. I perceive that the reason my
neighbor cannot entertain certain views is the
narrow limits within which he is obliged to live
on account of the smallness of his means. His
WINTER. 423
instinct tells him that it will not do to relax his
hold here, and take hold where he cannot keep
hold.
Feb. 22, 1855. . . . J. Farmer showed me
an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or
four weeks ago. They are not very uncommon
about his barns. All white but the tip of the
tail. Two conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw.
In summer they are distinguished from the red
weasel, which is a little smaller, by the length of
their tails particularly, six or more inches, while
the red one s is not more than two inches long.
. . . He had seen a partridge drum standing on
a wall ; said it stood very upright, and produced
the sound by striking its wings together behind
its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike
the wall nor its body. This he is sure of, and
declares that he is mistaken who affirms the con
trary, though it were Audubon himself. Wil
son says he " begins to strike with his stiffened
wings," while standing on a log, but does not
say what he strikes, though one would infer it
was either the log or his body. Peabody says he
beats his body with his wings.
Feb. 22, 1856. . . . Now first, the snow
melting and the ice beginning to soften, I see
those slender, grayish-winged insects creeping
with closed wings over the snow-clad ice. Have
seen none before this winter. They are on all
424 WINTER.
parts of the river, of all sizes, from one third
of an inch to an inch long ; are to be seen every
warm day afterward.
Feb. 23, 1841. . . . There is a subtle elixir
in society which makes it a fountain of health
to the sick. We want no consolation which is
not the overflow of our friend s health. "We
will have no condolence, who are not dolent our
selves. We would have our friend come and
respire healthily before us with the fragrance
of many meadows and heaths in his breath, and
we will inhabit his body while our own recruits.
Nothing is so good medicine in sickness as to
witness some nobleness in another which will
advertise us of health. In sickness it is our
faith that ails, and noble deeds reassure us.
That anybody has thought of you on some
indifferent occasion frequently implies more
good will than you had reason to expect. You
have henceforth a stronger motive for conduct.
We do not know how many amiable thoughts
are current.
Feb. 23, 1842. . . . True politeness is only
hope and trust in men. It never addresses a
fallen or falling man, but salutes a rising gener
ation. It does not flatter, but only congratu
lates.
Feb. 23, 1853 I think myself in a wilder
country, and a little nearer to primitive times,
WINTER. 425
when I read in old books which spell the word
savages with an I (salvages), like John Smith s
" General Historic of Virginia," etc., reminding
me of the derivation of the word from sylva^
some of the wild wood and its bristling branches
still left in their language. The savages they
describe are really salvages, men of the woods.
Feb. 23, 1854. A. M. The snow drives hori
zontally from the north or northwesterly in long
waving lines like the outline of a swell or
billow.
p. M. Saw some of those architectural drifts
forming. The fine snow came driving along
over the field like steam curling from a roof.
As the current rises to go over the wall, it pro
duces a lull in the angle made by the wall and
the ground, and accordingly just enough snow is
deposited there to fill the triangular calm, but
the greater part passes over, and is deposited in
the larger calm. A portion of the wind also
apparently passes through the chinks of the
wall, and curves upward against the main drift,
appearing to carve it, and perforate it in various
fashions, holding many snowy particles in sus
pension, in vertical eddies. I am not sure to
what extent the drift is carved and perforated,
and how far the snow is originally deposited in
these forms.
Feb. 23, 1855. . . . Mr. L. says that he and
,
426 WINTER.
his son George fired at white swans in Texas
on the water, and though George shot two with
ball, and killed them, the others in each case
gathered about them, and crowded them off out
of their reach.
Feb. 23, 1856. ... I read in the papers
that the ocean is frozen, or has been lately, on
the back side of Cape Cod, at the Highland
Light, one mile out from the shore (not to
bear or walk on probably), a phenomenon
which, it is said, the oldest have not witnessed
before.
Feb. 23, 1857. P. M. See two yellow-spotted
tortoises in the ditch S. of Trillium wood. You
saunter expectant in the mild air along the soft
edge of a ditch filled with melted snow, and
paved with leaves in some sheltered place, yet
perhaps with some ice at one end still, and are
thrilled to see stirring mid the leaves at the
bottom, sluggishly burying themselves from
your sight again, these brilliantly spotted crea
tures. There are commonly two, at least. The
tortoise is stirring in the ditches again. In
your latest spring, they still look incredibly
strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants
and contemporaries of yours.
I say in my thought to my neighbor who was
once my friend, It is of no use to speak the
truth to you. You will not hear it. What then
shall I say to you ?
WINTER. 427
At the instant that I seem to be saying fare
well forever to one who has been my friend, I
find myself unexpectedly near to him, and it is
our very nearness and dearness to each other
that gives depth and significance to that " for
ever." Thus I am a helpless prisoner, and these
chains I have no skill to break. While I think
I have broken one link, I have been forging
another. I have not yet known a Friendship
to cease, I think. I fear I have experienced its
decaying. Morning, noon, and night, I suffer
a physical pain, an aching of the breast which
unfits me for my tasks. It is perhaps most
intense at evening. With respect to Friendship
I feel like a wreck that is driving before the
gale, with a crew suffering from hunger and
thirst, not knowing what shore, if any, they
may reach, so long have I breasted the conflict
ing waves of this sentinent, my seams open and
my timbers laid bare. I float on Friendship s
sea simply because my specific gravity is less
than its, but no longer that stanch and graceful
vessel that careened so buoyantly over it. My
planks and timbers are scattered. At most I
hope to make a sort of raft of Friendship on
which with a few of our treasures we may float
to some land. That aching of the breast, the
grandest pain that man endures, which no ether
can assuage !
428 WINTER.
You cheat me, you keep me at a distance with
your manners. I know of no other dishonesty,
no other devil. Why this doubleness, these
compliments? They are the worst of lies. A
lie is not worse between traders than a compli
ment between friends. I would not, I cannot
speak. I will let you feel my thought, my feel
ing. Friends ! They are united for goocf, for
evil. They can delight each other as none other
can. Lying on lower levels is but a trivial
offense compared with civility and compliments
on the level of Friendship.
I visit my friend for joy, not for disturbance.
If my coming hinders him in the least conceiva
ble degree, I will exert myself to the utmost to
stay away. I will get the Titans to help me stand
aloof, will labor night and day to construct a
rampart between us. If my coming casts but
the shadow of a shadow before it, I will retreat
swifter than the wind, and more untrackable. I
will be gone irrevocably, if possible, before he
fears that I am coming.
If the teeth ache, they can be pulled. If the
heart aches, what then ? Shall we pluck it out ?
Must friends then expect the fate of those
oriental twins, that one shall at last bear about
the corpse of the other, by that same ligature
that bound him to a living companion ?
Look before you leap. Let the isthmus be
WINTER. 429
cut through, unless sea meets sea at exactly
the same level, unless a perfect understanding
and equilibrium has been established from the
beginning around Cape Horn and that unnamed
northern cape, what a tumult ! It is Atlantic
and Atlantic, or Atlantic and Pacific.
I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen
a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he
dimpled the surface as he leapt in, I have seen
the brilliant spotted tortoise stirring at the bot
tom of ditches, I have seen the clear sap trick
ling from the red maple.
Feb. 23, 1859. [Worcester.] p. M. Walk
to Quinsigamond Pond, where was very good
skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and
warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. I was
just saying to B that I should look for hard
ice in the shade or on the N. side of some hill
close to the shore, though skating was out of the
question elsewhere, when looking up I saw a gen
tleman and lady very gracefully gyrating, and,
as it were, courtesying to each other, in a small
bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of
the pond. Intervening bushes and shore con
cealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful
motions, their bodies inclined at various angles,
as they gyrated forward and backward about a
small space, looking as if they would hit each
other, reminded me of the circling of two
430 WINTER.
winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and
approaching.
I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds
going over.
Feb. 23, 1860. 3 p. M. Thermometer 58
and snow almost gone, river rising. We have
not had so warm a day since the beginning of
December, which was unusually warm. I walk
over the moist Nawshawtuck hillside, and see the
green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd s
purse, sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed.
A fact must be the vehicle of some humanity
in order to interest us. Otherwise it is like
giving a man a stone when he asks for bread.
Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not
mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior,
as when the annalist fables, and makes animals
speak and act like men. It must be warm,
moist, incarnated, have been breathed on at least.
A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.
INDEX.
ABORIGINES, 144^
Account book, 266-269.
Acquaintances, 318.
Activity, 282.
Acton, 198.
Adams, John Quincy, 88.
Adversity, 414.
Advice, 43, 367.
^Eachylus, 279.
Air, 404, 418.
Alcott, 196.
Alderberry, 152.
Alders, 87, 89, 94, 97, 152, 153, 155,
177, 370, 371.
Alley, John B., 174.
Ambition, 310.
Amherst, 12, 161.
Ancients, 406, 420.
Andromeda, 125, 152, 153, 189. 190,
252, 307, 308, 339, 404.
Andromeda ponds, 15, 57.
Animals, 136, 405.
Ants, 221.
Aphorisms, 137, 144, 183, 193, 254,
256, 396.
Apple-tree, 343.
Arabians, 222.
Arctic animals, 49.
Arctic voyagers, 66.
Aristotle, 35, 122.
Arrowheads, 132, 380, 418.
Arthur, 37, 213.
Ashes, 100.
Aspirations, 310.
Assabet, 177, 414.
Assabet spring, 415.
Asters, 30.
Astrology, 216.
Astronomy, 217.
Atlantis, 168, 203.
Atmosphere, 146, 175, 359, 360.
Attacus Promethea, 410.
Audience, the, 310.
Auditors, 339.
Authors, 42.
Azalea, 152.
Bacon, 264.
Baffin s Bay, 94.
Bailey, 188.
Baker farm, 3, 176.
Balm of Gilead, 363.
Barberry, 5, 97.
Barber s Historical Collections, 328.
Barnsdale wood, 9.
Barrett, N., 5.
Barry, 187.
Bartlett s Cliff, 27
Baskets, 118, 143.
Bear, 158, 360, 361.
Beauty, 82, 105, 213.
Beehives, 337.
Bees, 363.
Beliefs, 304, 305, 338.
Ball, 25, 219, 338.
Beomyces rosaceus, 133, 207.
Berries, 29, 70, 71, 85, 86, 97, 125,
143, 153.
Bidens Brook, 374.
Billerica, 325.
Bingham s Purchase, 93.
Birches, 86, 9G, 97, 111, 112, 113,
201, 252, 258, 373.
Birches, black, 112, 258.
Birches, canoe, 112.
Birches, white, 113, 373.
Birches, yellow, 111, 112, 113.
Birds, 50, 97, 132, 197, 276, 317, 327,
331, 391, 408.
Birds nests, 171, 203.
Bittern Cliff, 311.
Blueberry, 68, 69, 152, 153, 252.
Blueberry bushes, 16.
Bluebirds, 53, 54, 404, 430.
Bluejays, 73.
Blueness, 179, 215, 298, 348.
Bluet, 70.
Body, 202, 331, 332, 379, 417.
432
INDEX.
Bombay, 184.
Bonnets, 23, 24.
Books, 318, 323, 407.
Booming of pond, 88.
Boston, 21, 70, 161, 178, 394.
Boston Common, 199.
Boston Harbor, 210, 234.
Botany, 222, 342, 400.
Boxboro , 108, 109.
Boys skating, 325, 327.
Bretagne, 37.
Bridges, 320.
Brilliants, 188, 189.
Brister s Hill, 27, 30, 70.
Brister s Spring, 275.
Britton s Camp, 1G9.
Brooks, 112, 1G3, 249.
Brown, Simon, 3G1, 368, 369.
Brown s scrub oak lot, 136.
Buds, 251, 300, 301, 363.
Buffoonery, 238.
Buffum, Jonathan, 174, 178, 179.
Building, 176.
Bunker Hill, 70.
Burton, 365.
Buzzing sound, 169, 170.
C., W. E., 53.
" Cabinet Council," the, 146.
Cake, 143, 144.
Cambridge, 161, 394.
Canada, 99, 118.
Canada lynx, 394.
Canal, 22.
Cape Cod, 103, 426.
Capital, 196.
Carlisle, 167.
Cars, 321.
Cartridge-box, 110.
Cassandra ponds, 188.
Caterpillar, 142, 177, 246, 247, 375,
392.
Catkins, 94, 97, 133, 155, 252, 256,
364, 370, 392.
Cato, 175, 176, 194, 195, 370.
Cat-owl, 41.
Cat-tails, 248.
Cattle, 53.
Causeways, 326.
Cawing of crows, 164, 296, 297.
C banning, 285.
Character, 72.
Chaucer, 96.
Chemistry, 236.
Chestnut burs, 7
Chickadees, 50, 122, 167, 178, 201,
295, 373, 391, 392, 419.
duckweed, 193, 311, 341.
Church bells, 8.
Cinnamon stone, 102.
Civilization, 367, 368.
Clamshell Hill, 124, 132.
Clamshells, 34.
Clematis Brook, 311, 312.
Cliff Hill, 311.
Cliffs, 96, 98, 99, 146, 168, 320.
Climate, 42.
Clouds, 18. 38, 127, 128, 130, 137,
148, 168, 193, 203, 204, 206, 258,
278, 320.
Clover, 85, 132, 251.
Club, 135, 160.
Cock-crowing, 28, 41, 53, 78, 129,
143, 164, 228, 230, 234, 263, 297,
Cockle shells, 370.
Cocoons, 14, 171, 177, 178, 410.
Cold, 13, 59, 133, 134, 151, 161, 226,
233, 234, 248, 285, 293, 343, 344,
356.
Cold Friday, 226, 344.
Coleridge, 238.
College teaching, 81.
Colors, 381, 386.
Colors on snow and ice, 155, 156,
377, 383, 384, 387.
Columella, 175, 176, 397.
Commonplace books, 403.
Companions, 49, 77, 135, 160.
Composition, 387.
Conantum, 63, 250.
Conantum End, 10.
Concord, 12, 25, 28, 29, 93, 102, 134,
146, 161, 326.
Concord River, 124, 188.
Conscience, 254, 279.
Consciousness, 379.
Consistency, 397.
Constellations, 215.
Conversation, 77, 127.
Corn, 143.
Cornel, 312.
Corner road, 220, 311.
" Counterparts," 416.
Cow-bell, 337.
Cows, 150, 336.
Cracking of ground, 12, 156, 344.
Creaking of wagon, 220, 343.
Creeper, 391.
Cress, 6, 311.
Crickets, 53, 352.
Cromwell, 116.
Crowfoot, 147, 148.
Crows, 40, 48, 89, 161, 164, 228, 296,
297.
Crystallizations, 8, 344, 374.
Crystals, 2, 91, 92, 119, 137, 166, 213,
287, 321, 375, 383.
Cymri, 37.
INDEX.
433
Daguerreotype, 309, 310.
Dandelion, 251.
Days, lengthening of, 408.
Days, shortness of, 400.
Dead, the, 13.
Death, 14, 51, 202, 331, 333, 414.
Debtor and creditor, 252.
Decay, 269.
Deep Cut, 215, 231, 232, 248, 418.
Deer, 220, 396.
Demigod, 52.
Dennis s Swamp, 124.
Derby s Bridge, 226.
Devil, 351.
Dew-drops, 119, 126.
Diogenes, 185.
Diplomacy, 66.
Disappointments, 204, 342.
Discipline, 91.
Ditch Pond, 235.
Diver, 28.
Dob-chick, 28.
Dog, 236, 248, 316, 405.
Dog-barking, 40, 41, 42.
Dogwood, 5, 124, 153, 252.
Dormancy, 65, 376.
Dreams, 136, 253, 254, 407.
Dress, 24, 343.
Drizzle, 84.
Duck, 30, 132, 276, 389, 390.
Dugan, Jenny, 32, 398.
Duty, 378.
E., R. W., 119, 210.
Early New England writers, 148.
Early rising, 233.
Earth, the, 3, 73, 143.
Earth, perfume from, 138.
Earth voice, 103.
Echo, 50, 368, 369.
Elms, 54, 98, 112, 198, 200, 241, 242.
Emberiza nivalis, 54.
Emergencies, 340.
Emerson, 163, 214, 327.
Emerson, Miss, 141, 261.
England, 116.
Englishman, i08.
Ermine weasel, 423.
Erskine, 17.
Esox fasciatus, 212.
Esquimaux, 11, 49, 211.
Estrangement, 76, 223, 354, 355, 356.
Etiquette, 335.
Experience, 147, 153, 162.
Expression, 257.
Eyes, 163.
Fables, 35, 235.
Fact, 430.
Facts, precedence in, 238.
Failures, 363.
Fair Haven, 83, 117, 188, 250, 312,
410.
Fair Haven Hill, 38, 63, 83, 231, 321,
356.
Fair Haven Island, 16, 389.
Fair Haven Pond, 3, 20, 22, 33, 39,
80, 140, 229, 288, 293, 314, 322, 359,
363, 375, 383, 389.
aith, 298, 299.
Talco lineatus, 165.
Fame, 310.
Farmer, J., 423.
Farmer, Mr., 164, 165, 174.
Farmers, 32, 56, 150, 200, 323, 336,
388, 389.
Fences, 10.
Ferns, 125, 275.
Fields, 266.
Finches, 48, 89.
Fire, 5, 99, 324, 325, 412.
Firs, 30, 86.
Fisherman, 7, 48, 91, 359.
Fishes, 7, 59, 123, 388.
Fish-hawk, 65.
Fitchburg, 330.
Flame, 99.
Flattery, 357.
Flint s Pond, 6, 7, 14, 20, 39, 163.
Floating islands, 309.
Flowers, 290, 343.
Forest, 8.
Forest Hall, 75.
Forest voices, 103.
Fox [Charles James], 17, 116.
Foxes, 16, 42, 48, 94, 104, 220, 235,
287, 288, 289, 293, 315, 316, 364,
365.
Fox-hound, 207.
Freezing, 13, 61.
Friends, 1, 2, 12, 14, 75,76, 205, 215,
223, 225, 278, 280, 290, 298, 299,
303, 305, 310, 342, 347, 393, 412,
422, 426, 428.
Friendship, 1, 253, 346, 354, 355, 356,
358, 393, 402, 416, 427, 428,
Fringilla hyemalis, 6, 48.
Frost, 151, 343.
Frost-work, 198, 199.
Funeral customs, 184.
Fungi, 113, 262, 286.
Future, the, 140.
Game, 91.
Gardiner, Captain, 46, 48.
Gaylussacia, 68.
" General Historic of Virginia,"
425.
Genius, 43, 197, 255, 264, 378, 379,
399.
484
INDEX.
Georgic, 61, 62.
Ghosts, 8.
Gladness, 107.
Glaze. 15, 29, 198, 199,
Gods, 228.
Golden Age, 61, 62.
Goldfinches, 6.
Good, the, 392, 393.
Goodwill, 424.
Gowing s Swamp, 307, 401.
Grammar, 104.
Grasses, 31, 84, 87.
Grasshoppers, 246.
Great Fields, 153.
Great Meadows, 185, 286, 300,
Grebe, 28.
Greece, 106, 146, 186.
Greeks, 41, 146, 168. 278, 279.
Greeley, Horace, 298.
Green Island, 118.
Greenland, 69.
Greenness, 32, 212.
Grief, 193,
Grisly bear, SCO, 361.
Groves, 195, 196.
Growth, 402.
Guitar, 172.
Gulf Stream, 29,
Gutenberg, 183,
Hangbirds, 54.
Hannibal, 204.
Happiness, 114, 123 r 159, 190, 204,
212.
Haste, 45.
Hats, 23, 24.
Hawks, 65, 164, 165, 174, 295, 390.
Haycocks, 175.
Hayden, 347.
Head, Sir Francis, 340.
Health, 44, 57, 389.
Heath, 70.
Heaven, 256.
Help, 366, 367.
Hemlocks, 8, 30, 167.
Hen-hawk. 65, 165, 396, 399.
Hens, 143, 164, 180, 193. 337.
Heywood s Meadow, 248.
Hickory, 251.
Highland Light, 426.
Hill, Mr., 119.
Hill, the, 165, 270.
Hills, 70, 140, 141.
Hip^ 97.
" History of Animals," 36.
Holden wood, 377.
Holly, 29.
Holt, 104.
Holt Bend, 61.
Homer, 139, 276.
Homesickness, 37.
Hope, 412, 415.
Hubbard s Bath, 201,
Hubbard s Bridge, 59,
Hubbard s Field, 85.
Hubbard s Meadow, 37T.
Hubbard s Swamp, 111.
Hubbub, 123.
Huckleberries, 48.
Huckleberry, 36, 68, 70.
Huckleberry cake, 143, 144,
Huckleberry pastures, 70.
Hume, 99.
Humor, 3.
Hunt farm, 5.
Hunt pasture, 111.
Hunters, 27, 90, 226.
Hunt s Island, 124.
Hymn, 228.
Ice, 22, 30, 32, 50, 60, 84, 85, 91, 96,
97, 98, 114, 188, 212, 234, 247, 252,
258, 301, 306, 307, 311, 314, 366,
371, 376, 383, 392, 401.
Ice-cracks, 50, 306.
Ice-flakes, 379, 380.
Icicles, 13.
Imagination, 19, 385,
India rubber, 40.
Indian heaven, 132.
Indians, 48, 66, 91, 109, 118, 143,
224, 235, 275, 332, 333, 380.
Industry, 230.
Infidel, 173, 338.
Influence, 378.
Innocence, 52, 272.
Insanity, 57.
Insects, 247, 271, 286, 312, 425.
Instinct, 411.
Integrity, 281, 378.
Invitation, 224, 225, 305.
January, 313.
January thaw, 132, 138.
Jays, 73, 312, 373.
Jesuits, 224.
Johnswort, 62, 147, 251, 311, 346.
Jones, Ephraim, 267.
Jonson, 357.
Josselyn, 148, 202, 352.
Journal, 32, 115, 167, 240, 264, 265,
281, 350.
Journey, 265.
Juniper, 251.
Kalmia glauca, 308, 339, 404.
Kirkham, 104.
Kitten, 11,394, 395.
Knavery, 372.
Knowledge, 127.
INDEX.
435
108,
284,
180,
Labor, division of, 36.
Lake school, 227.
Lakin, Jake, 104.
Lanrlor quoted. 305, 306.
Landscape, 86, 87, 97, 99, 100,
109, 322, 348.
Language, 334.
Larks, 12, 29, 48.
Lamed Brook, 307.
Laws, 303, 304.
Leaves, 404, 430.
Lecture, 7G, 174, 208, 209, 214,
285, 411.
Lecturer, 158.
Ledum latifolium, 339, 406.
Lee place, 100.
Lee s Bridge, 33.
Lee s Cliff, 22, 201, 302, 324.
Leisure, 45, 157.
Le Jeune quoted, 88, 89.
Lepraria chloriiia, 180.
Letter writing, 50.
Libraries, 318, 319.
Lichens, 31, 32, 74, 75, 133,
207, 258, 270, 311, 348, 349,
411.
Life, 9, 12, 18, 32, 42, 44, 45, 51
89, 90, 91, 132, 140, 1G2, 163,
173, 181, 218, 231, 255, 263,
353, 358, 385, 409.
Life everlasting, 346.
Light, 384, 418.
Lily roots, 34.
Limits, 330, 331.
Linaria, 364.
Linnseus, 352, 400, 401.
Lion, 420.
Little John, 8.
Little Nahant, 179.
Lives, 147.
Living, 157, 412.
Loafer, 45.
Long Wharf, 21.
Love, 201, 232, 290.
Love-cracked, 187.
Lover, 347. ^
Lumber, 65.
Lu ral lu ral lu, 342.
Lycopus, 15, 16.
Lynn, 174.
Mackenzie s River, 94.
Magazines, 42.
Maine, 143.
Maine woods, 93.
Man, 106, 107, 122, 135, 160, 173, 183,
212, 262, 335.
Manners, 398, 426.
Maples, 87, 177, 250, 306, 371.
Marsh, 248.
Mather, Cotton, letter of, 328, 329.
" Maxims of State," 146.
McKean, 186, 187.
Meadow, 390.
Meadow mouse, 39, 314, 316.
Meadow walk, 372.
Medicinal recipes, 406.
Meeting, 413.
Men, 110, 135, 159, 160, 183, 213,
228, 237, 281, 335, 403.
Mice, 182.
Migratory instinct, 247.
Miles, Martial, 126, 29G.
Mill Brook, 6, 163.
Mill dam, 55.
Milton, 145, 279.
Ministerial Swamp, 131.
Minott, 104, 220, 228, 276, 277, 278,
338.
Miiiott s Meadow, 163.
Minstrelsy, heroes of, 37.
Mirage, 359, 360.
Mist, 73, 137.
Mocking bird, 231.
Moles, 47, 48.
Moment, the, 255.
Money, 343.
Montaigne, 265.
Moods, 9, 82, 83,
Moonlight, 203, 215, 320, 322.
Moose, 285.
Morality, 138, 139.
Morning, 128, 137, 258, 259.
Mosses, 75, 231.
Moths, 410.
Motions in Nature, 52.
Mountains, 14, 40.
Mount Washington, 69, 110.
Mouse, 152, 183, 316, 419.
Music, 41, 139, 140, 172, 173, 181,
232, 335, 340, 353, 413.
Musketaquid, 64, 65, 199, 227.
Musketicook, 326.
Muskrats, 33, 35, 67, 132, 225, 226,
228, 229, 296, 302, 306, 341, 374.
Myself, 316, 317, 347, 363.
Mythologies, 41, 396.
Naevia, 36.
Names, 406.
Nantucket, 29, 46, 47.
Nashua, 12.
Natural history, 406.
Natural objects, 109.
Nature, 6, 15, 18, 71, 72, 105, 106,
109, 110, 126, 135, 137, 147, 231,
236, 257, 309, 317.
Naushon, 29.
Nawshawtuok, 128, 430.
Neighbor, 95, 154.
436
INDEX.
New Bedford, 28, 29.
New England, 32, 33, 109, 132.
" New England s Prospect," 149.
New Hampshire, 71, 110.
New Testament, 1, 297, 298.
News, 55, 56.
Night, 83, 215, 217, 218.
Nobscot, 306, 307.
North Branch, 326.
Northern Lights, 409.
November, 294.
Nuthatch, 121, 390.
Nut Meadow, 295, 348.
Nut Meadow Brook, 243, 296.
Nutting s Pond, 325.
Oak leaves, 23, 102, 206, 321.
Oak lot, 136.
Oak woods, 117.
Oaks, 5, 80, 87, 96, 98, 102, 103, 108,
110, 112, 218, 219, 250, 252, 300.
Observers, 269, 270.
Ocean, freezing of, 421.
Officials, 107.
Osiers, 395.
Otter, 22, 79, 90, 337, 414.
Owls, 23, 41, 126, 131, 219, 295, 320,
321,322.
Oxen, 25, 176, 194, 195, 396.
Pacing, 100, 101.
Pain, 202.
Paint, 257.
Pansy, 254.
Pantry, 258, 307.
Pantry Brook, 373.
Pantry Meadow, 324.
Parasites, 282.
Parmelia, 306.
Parsees, 184.
Partialness, 46.
Partridges, 3, 48, 60, 80, 152, 261,
301, 302, 316, 371, 381, 382, 423.
Peat, 309.
Pelham Pond, 197, 301, 325.
Pennyroyal, 31.
Persian, 197.
Perth Amboy, 40.
Peterboro Hills, 104, 419, 420.
Pfeiffer, Madame, 184.
Pheasants, 29.
Philistines, 114.
Philosopher, 185, 186.
Philosophia Botanica, 400.
Piano, 239.
Pickerel, 25, 50, 59, 212, 312.
Picture, a, 291, 292.
Pigeons, 313.
Pigweed, 364, 382.
Pine cones, 77, 251, 324, 420.
Pine needles, 30, 335.
Pine roots, 10.
Pine stump, 336.
Pine woods, 25, 30, 32.
Pines, 63, 64, 77, 80, 86, 87, 97, 197,
206, 218, 311.
Pines, Norway, 46, 47.
Pines, pitch, 23, 26, 27, 46, 47, 49,
88, 98, 99, 261, 299, 300, 336.
Pines, white, 10, 44, 94. 97, 98, 167,
250, 296, 336, 398, 399.
Pioneer work, 82.
Plantain, 193.
Pleasant Meadow, 315.
Plutarch, 265.
Pockets, 41.
Poetic frenzy, 349.
Poetry, 263, 403.
Poets, 179, 217.
Poke, 358.
Politeness, 424.
Ponds, 13, 25, 43, 88, 250.
Pontederia, 34.
Poplar, 94.
Popped corn, 105.
Post-office, 55, 56.
Potter s Meadow, 30.
Poverty,209, 353, 354.
Powder mill, 129, 130, 131.
Pratt s, 112.
Precocity, 380, 381.
Present, the, 316.
Presentiments, 340.
Primrose, 311.
Prince, 178.
Prinos, 85, 113, 125.
Print, 411.
Privacy, 422.
Profanity, 292.
Property, 196.
Prose, 203.
Prosperity, 253, 414.
Quails, 347, 348.
Questioning, 224.
Quhigamond Pond, 118, 429.
Quinsigamond Village, 118.
Rabbits, 134, 152, 313, 327, 381.
Raccoons, 48.
Railroad shanties, 367.
Rain, 270, 271, 394.
Rainbow, 128.
Raleigh, 110, 116, 145.
Reading, 222.
Record on snow, 39, 89, 100.
Red Bridge, 5.
Red-house crossing, 101.
Reed-mace, 248.
Relations, 4, 76, 95, 162, 183, 218.
INDEX.
437
Religion, 333.
Reminiscences, 213.
Repentance, 164.
Repetition, 309.
Resemblance, 332.
Resistance, 273.
Respiration, 72.
Restraints, 169.
Retirement, 422.
Rhode Island, 170.
Rhymes, 310.
Rice, Israel, 58.
Rig Veda, 228, 240, 241.
Ringdove, 40.
Riorden, Johnny, 5, 273, 274, 352.
Ripley, Mrs., 180.
Rivals, 187, 188.
River, the, 7, 60, 80, 132, 148, 188,
203, 209, 210, 234, 243, 250, 252,
258, 276, 293.
Rivera, 144, 177.
Robin Hood, 9.
Robins, 8, 29, 48, 54.
Rock, 83, 84.
Romance, 402.
Rough and smooth, 136, 137.
Routine, 230, 263.
Rudeness, 191, 192.
Rumor, 84.
Russell, 180.
Sabbath bell, 25.
Salix alba, 199.
Sallows, 312.
Salutations, 273.
Salvages, 425.
Sand foliage, 73.
Sanity, 58.
Sanskrit, 241.
Saskatchewan, 120.
Sassafras, 360.
Saugus, 174.
Savages, 11, 66, 67, 90.
Sawing, 187.
Saw-mill Brook, 53, 234.
Sawyers, 63, 64.
Saxifrage, 132.
Saxon race. 179.
Saxonville, 326.
Scenery, 189, 322.
Schoolcraft, 170.
Science, 19, 216, 403, 406.
Sea-room, 408.
Sea-serpent, 178.
Seasons, 13, 123, 237, 256.
Secrets, 418.
Sedge, 188, 229, 314.
Seed vessels, 190.
Seeds, 185, 189, 327,
Self-reliance, 280.
Shadows, 102, 197, 198, 218, 219,
250, 320, 420.
Shakespeare, 116, 145, 264, 279.
Shelter, 229.
Shepherd s purse, 132.
Sherwood, 9.
Shore lark, 48.
Shrikes, 13, 57, 67, 326.
Shrub oaks, 27, 141.
Siasconset, 46.
Sickness, 202, 388, 414.
Silence, 111, 217, 218, 358.
Sin, 25, 111.
Sincerity, 237, 317, 346.
Sins, 144, 145.
Six.mysteries of the number, 120, 121.
Skating, 20, 58, 176, 301, 303, 324,
325, 327, 373, 380, 429.
Sketch, 361, 362.
Skunk-cabbage, 132, 275, 380.
Sky, 39, 73, 83, 96, 100, 127, 128,
133, 157, 192, 193, 201, 206, 215,
216, 225, 257, 311, 384, 418.
Smoke, 100, 153, 154, 343.
Snow, 26, 27, 44, 54, 79, 101, 116,
140, 149, 166, 168, 181, 188, 207,
209, 260, 261, 300, 321, 323, 327,
328, 330, 408.
Snow, a betrayer, 38, 79, 89, 100.
Snow-birds, 13, 48, 59, 361.
Snow-bow, 127.
Snow-bunting, 55, 59, 89, 220, 307.
Snow-cave, 210, 211.
Snow-drifts, 21, 39. 54, 88, 89, 101,
117, 146, 152, 153, 261, 425.
Snow-flakes, 62, 119, 120, 125, 137,
149, 166.
Snow-fleas, 117, 179, 237, 297, 312,
369.
Snow-shoes, 91.
Snow-stars, 120, 121.
Snow-storms, 39, 54, 119, 120, 151,
225.
Society, 133, 136, 160, 205, 272, 353,
357, 424.
Socrates, 185.
Solitude, 49, 134, 152, 259, 354.
Song sparrow, 181, 271, 276, 314.
Sorrel, 85, 251.
Soul, the, 247.
" Soul s Errand," the, 146.
Sounds, 41, 44, 51, 78, 102, 129, 141,
143, 147, 164, 296, 322, 356, 385,
417.
Southwest, 132.
Spanish Brook, 250.
Sparrows, 48, 181, 271, 276, 300.
Spawning of fishes, 123.
Speech, 115.
Sphagnum, 152, 249, 307
438
INDEX.
Spice Islands, 16.
Spicula, 85, 8G, 87.
Spiders, 247.
Spitzbergen, 55, 56, 87.
Spleenwort, 311.
Spring, 312, 402, 405, 419, 429.
Spruce, 97.
Squash, 262.
Squirrels, 7, 31, 65, 79, 251, 402, 420,
421.
Stars, 40, 83, 216, 238, 323.
Steam, 321.
Stellaria media, 311, 341.
Still life, 183.
Storm, 407, 408.
Stow, Beck, 300.
Stow s wood lot, 97, 102, 390.
Strangers, 111.
Strawberry, 311.
Strix Acadica, 126.
Strix Asio, 36.
Stubble, 98, 114.
Stupidity, 387.
Sudbury, 301, 305, 379, 380.
Suicide, 42, 181.
Summer, 163.
Summer life, 51.
Summer, memories of, 57, 62, 163.
Sun, 217, 346.
Sunbeams, 44.
Sunday, 71.
Sunlight, 114, 249, 250.
Sunrise, 52.
Sunsets, 18, 23, 38, 40, 100, 127, 128,
156, 378.
Superstitions, 184.
Surveying, 113, 234, 368, 369.
Swallows, 241.
Swamp pink, 252.
Swamp walk, 152.
Swamps, 5, 10, 111, 112, 124, 131,
152, 308, 309, 339.
Swampscott, 178.
Swans, 426.
Swedish inn, 212.
Symbols, 340, 382.
Sympathy, 50, 202, 310, 378, 413, 416.
Systems, 406.
Tail s Island, 306.
Tansy, 85.
Tavbel Spring, 226.
Tarbell s Meadow, 370.
Tea, 339.
Telegraph harp, 105, 1462, 19, 231,
240, 248, 283, 390.
Telegraph wire, 97, 146.
Telescope, 163, 217.
Texas, 426.
Thaw, 132, 156, 300, 301.
Thistle, 251.
Thorer, 393. 394.
Thoughts, 223, 224, 256, 301, 341.
Thoughts and dreams, 9.
Tickets, 222.
Time, 147, 190, 191, 341.
Titmice, 132, 391.
Tortoises, 421, 426.
Townships, 108, 109.
Tracks, 207, 293, 313, 322, 401.
Tragedies, 341.
Trail, 90, 287, 414, 415.
Translators, 241.
Travel, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 292,
365.
Traveler, 412.
Treatise, 66, 67.
Tree-sparrow, 27, 46, 89, 137, 152,
189, 190, 364.
Trees, 44, 46, 86, 87, 94, 96, 97, 116,
198, 199, 250, 255, 287.
Trench, 187, 266.
Trillium Wood, 149.
Trumpet weed, 85.
Truth, 72, 83, 254, 378, 379.
Truths, 52, 81, 336.
Tucker man, 351.
Turnpike Bridge, 6.
Tuttle s road, 274.
Types, 183.
Typha latifolia, 248.
Uncle Charles, 88.
Unconsciousness, 264.
Understanding, 389.
Unlikeness, 205.
Vaccinium Canadense, 69.
Vapor, 26, 51, 60, 129, 137, 164, 193.
Varro, 175, 203, 233, 285, 323, 336,
337, 370.
Veronica, 251.
Verses, 62, 156.
Views, 422.
Village, 242.
Village street, 54.
Vireo, 54, 171.
Virgil, 61, 393.
Virtue, 52, 72, 76, 145.
Vision, confined, 15.
Visiting, 390, 428.
Voice, the, 335.
Wachusett, 40.
" Walden" [the Book], 119.
Walden, 5, 14, 29, 48, 49, 91, 133,
142, 146, 154, 183, 197, 274, 291,
366.
Walden Pond, 14, 23, 28, 39, 40, 49,
79, 133, 197, 295.
INDEX.
439
Walden Woods, 92, 179, 200.
Walking, 163, 209, 259, 366, 384.
Walks, 15, 22, 86, 133, 154, 274.
Walnuts, 87.
Walrus, etc., 49.
Warmth and coldness, 2, 3.
Warren Miles s mill, 57.
Warren s Wood, 96.
Washington, 17.
Wasp, 247.
Water, 53, 75, 225, 376.
Water asclepias, 203.
Water-bugs, 235, 243, 244, 245, 246,
296.
Water-horehound, 16.
Water lily, 403, 404.
Water rights, 188.
Wayland, 301,305, 325, 326.
We receive what concerns us, 122.
Wealth, 95, 208, 253, 283.
Weasel, 174.
Weather, 7, 53, 142, 257.
Webster, 88, 104.
Weeds, 27, 30, 31, 85.
Weight, 310.
Well Meadow field, 16, 133, 136,
160, 182, 183.
Weston s field, 14.
Wharves, 21.
Wheeler, Bill, 184. 185, 186, 187.
White Pond, 296, 408, 409.
Whooping of ponds, 20.
Whortleberry family, 68.
Whortleberries, 68, 143.
Wigwam, 118.
Wild geese, 247, 277, 278.
Wilderness, 93, 94.
Wildness, 399.
Will, 266.
Willow, 86, 87, 133, 177, 200, 252,
256, 364, 370, 392.
Wilson, 55.
Winter, 117, 128, 137, 151, 153, 154,
243, 256, 294, 295, 397.
Winter afternoons, 141, 157.
Winter berries, 97.
Winter morning, 128, 137.
Winter night thoughts, 62.
Winter walk, 409.
Withdrawal, 169.
Wolf, 285.
Wolf-traps, 174.
Woman, a, 76, 111.
Womanhood, 76.
Wood, William, 148, 149.
Wood-chopper, 26, 28, 63, 274, 275,
291.
Woodland, 109.
Woodland walks, 133, 134, 135, 159.
Woodlots, 92, 93, 200.
Woodpaths, 96.
Wood-peckers, 27, 141, 312, 361, 391.
Wood-thrush, 78.
Woods, 9, 15, 18, 44, 206, 207, 218,
222, 250.
Worcester, 118, 429.
Words, 257, 263.
Words and relations, 4, 76.
Work, 231, 399, 400.
Work in Heaven, 159.
Writer, the, 12, 19, 20, 175, 239,
254, 282, 333, 363, 416.
Yellow birch swamps, 111.
Youth, 194, 350.
Youth and Age, 257.
Zeno, 345.
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