29 September 1851 – 5 October 1851

Wan der Donck says of the water-beech (buttonwood), “This tree retains the leaves later than any other tree of the woods.” P. M.— To Goose Pond via E. Hosmer’s; return by Walden. Found Hosmer carting out manure from under his barn to make room for the winter. He said he was tired of farming, he was too old. Quoted Webster as saying that he had never eaten the bread of idleness for a single day, and thought that Lord Brougham might have said as much with truth while he was in the opposition, but he did not know that he could say as much of himself. However, he did not wish to be idle, he merely wished to rest. Looked on Walden from the hill with the sawed pine stump on the north side. Scared up three black ducks, which rose with a great noise of their wings, striking the water. The hills this fall are unusually red, not only with the huckleberry, but the sumach and the black- berry vines. Walden plainly can never be spoiled by the wood- chopper, for, do what you will to the shore, there will sill remain this crystal well. The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on its hilly shore is quite charming. ‘They are unexpectedly and in- credibly brilliant, especially on the western shore and close to the water’s edge, where, alternating with yel- low birches and poplars and green oaks, they remind me of a line of soldiers, redcoats and riflemen in green mixed together.! The pine is one of the richest of trees to my eye. It stands like a great moss, a luxuriant mildew, — the pumpkin pine,— which the earth produces without effort. | The poet writes the history of his body. Query: Would not the cellular tissue of the grass poly make good tinder? I find that, when I light it, it burns up slowly and entirely, without blaze, like spunk.

To powder-mills, and set an intermediate bound-stone on the new road there. Saw them making hoops for powder-casks, of alder and the sprouts of the white birch, which are red with whitish spots. How interesting it is to observe a particu- lar use discovered in any material! I am pleased to find that the artisan has good reason for preferring one ma- terial to another for a particular purpose. I am pleased to learn that a man has detected any. wse in wood or stone or any material, or, in other words, its relation to man. The white ash has got its autumnal mulberry hue. What is the autumnal tint of the black ash? The for- mer contrasts strongly with the other shade-trees on the village street — the elms and buttonwoods — at this season, looking almost black at the first glance. The different characters of the trees appear [more clearly] at this season, when their leaves, so to speak, are ripe, than at any other, — than in the winter, for instance, when they are little remarkable and almost uniformly gray or brown, or in the spring and summer, when they are undistinguishably green. Now a red maple, an ash, a white birch, a Populus grandidentata, etc., is distin- guished almost as far as they are visible. It is with leaves as with fruits and woods, and animals and men; when they are mature their different characters appear. The sun has been obscured much of the day by pass- ing clouds, but now, at 5 Pp. m., the sun comes out and by the very clear and brilliant ight, — though the shadows begin to fall long from the trees, — it is proved how remarkably clear or pure the atmosphere is. Ac- cording to all accounts, an hour of such a light would be something quite memorable in England. As the wood of an old Cremona, its very fibre, per- chance, harmoniously transposed and educated to re- sound melody, has brought a great price, so methinks these telegraph-posts should bear a great price with musical instrument makers. It is prepared to be the material of harps for ages to come, as it were put asoak in and seasoning in music. Saw a hornets’ nest on a tree over the road near the powder-mills, thirty or forty feet high. Even the pearl, like the beautiful galls on the oaks, is said to be the production of diseases, or rather ob- struction, the fish covering as with a tear some rough obstruction that has got into his shell.

5 p. M. — Just put a fugitive slave, who has taken the name of Henry Williams, into the cars for Canada. He escaped from Stafford County, Virginia, to Boston last October; has been in Shadrach’s place at the Cornhill Coffee-House; had been corresponding through an agent with his master, who is his father, about buying himself, his master asking $600, but he having been able to raise only $500. Heard that there were writs out for two Williamses, fugitives, and was in- formed by his fellow-servants and employer that Auger- hole Burns and others of the police had called for him when he was out. Accordingly fled to Concord last night on foot, bringing a letter to our family from Mr. Lovejoy of Cambridge and another which Garrison had formerly given him on another occasion. He lodged with us, and waited in the house till funds were collected with which to forward him. Intended to dispatch him at noon through to Burlington, but when I went to buy his ticket, saw one at the depot who looked and behaved so much like a Boston policeman that I did not venture that time. An intelligent and very well-behaved man, a mulatto. There is art to be used, not only in selecting wood for a withe, but in using it. Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent; or is it only by accident that they are twisted ? The slave said he could guide himself by many other stars than the north star, whose rising and setting he knew. They steered for the north star even when it had got round and appeared to them to be in the south. They frequently followed the telegraph when there was no railroad. The slaves bring many superstitions from Africa. The fugitives sometimes superstitiously carry a turf in their hats, thinking that their success depends on it. These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year, when the very foliage of trees is colored like a blossom. It is a proper time for a yearly festival, an agricultural show. Candle-light.— To Conantum. The moon not quite half full. The twilight is much shorter now than a month ago, probably as the atmos- phere is clearer and there is less to reflect the light. The air is cool, and the ground also feels cold under my feet, as if the grass were wet with dew, which is not yet the case. I go through Wheeler’s corn-field in the twilight, where the stalks are bleached almost white, and his tops are still stacked along the edge of the field. The moon is not far up above the southwestern horizon. Looking west at this hour, the earth is an unvaried, undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin. There is no wind stirring. An oak tree in Hub- bard’s pasture stands absolutely motionless and dark against the sky. The crickets sound farther off or fainter at this season, as if they had gone deeper into the sod to avoid the cold. There are no crickets heard on the alders on the causeway. The moon looks colder in the water, though the water-bugs are still active. ‘There is a great change between this and my last moonlight walk. I experience a comfortable warmth when I approach the south side of a dry wood, which keeps off the cooler air and also retains some of the warmth of day. The voices of travellers in the road are heard afar over the fields, even to Conantum house. The stars are brighter than before. The moon is too far west to be seen re- flected in the river at Tupelo Cliff, but the stars are reflected. The river is a dark mirror with bright points feebly fluctuating. I smell the bruised horsemint, which I cannot see, while I sit on the brown rocks by the shore. I see the glow-worm under the damp cliff. No whip- poor-wills are heard to-night, and scarcely a note of any other bird. At8 o’clock the fogs have begun, which, with the low half-moon shining on them, look like cob- webs or thin white veils spread over the earth. They are the dreams or visions of the meadow. The second growth of the white pine is probably softer and more beautiful than the primitive forest ever afforded. The primitive forest is more grand with its bare mossy stems and ragged branches, but exhibits no such masses of green needles trembling in the light. The elms are generally of a dirty or brownish yellow now.

p. mM. —Some of the white pines on Fair Haven Hill have just reached the acme of their fall; others have almost entirely shed their leaves, and they are scattered over the ground and‘the walls. ‘The same is the state of the pitch pines. At the Cliffs, I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks, just as they endeavored to do at my house in the woods. It is a little hazy as I look into the west to-day. The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uni- formly of a deep red.

Saturday. 'The emigrant has for weeks been tossing on the Atlantic and perchance as long ascend- ing the St. Lawrence with contrary winds, conversant as yet in the New World only with the dreary coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and the comparatively wild shores of the river below the Isle of Orleans. It is said that, under these circumstances, the sudden apparition of Quebec on turning Point Levi makes a memorable impression on the beholder.* Minott was telling me to-day that he used to know a man in Lincoln who had no floor to his barn, but waited till the ground froze, then swept it clean in his barn and threshed his grain on it. He also used to see men threshing their buckwheat in the field where it grew, having just taken off the surface down to a hard- pan. Minott used the word “gavel” to describe a parcel of stalks cast on the ground to dry. His are good old English words, and I am always sure to find them in the dictionary, though I never heard them before in my life. 7 I was admiring his corn-stalks disposed about the barn to dry, over or astride the braces and the timbers, of such a fresh, clean, and handsome green, retaining their strength and nutritive properties so, unlike the gross and careless husbandry of speculating, money- making farmers, who suffer their stalks to remain out till they are dry and dingy and black as chips. Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life —that I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him. He has not too much land to trou- ble him, — too much work to do, — no hired man nor boy, — but simply to amuse himself and live. He cares not so much to raise a large crop as to do his work well. He knows every pin and nail in his barn. If another linter is to be floored, he lets no hired man rob him of that amusement, but he goes slowly to the woods and, at his leisure, selects a pitch pine tree, cuts it, and hauls it or gets it hauled to the mill; and so he knows the history of his barn floor. Farming is an amusement which has lasted him longer than gunning or fishing. He is never in a hurry to get his garden planted and yet [it] is always planted soon enough, and none in the town is kept so beautifully clean. He always prophesies a failure of the crops, and yet is satisfied with what he gets. His barn floor is fastened down with oak pins, and he prefers them to iron spikes, which he says will rust and give way. He handles and amuses himself.with every ear of his corn crop as much as a child with its playthings, and so his small crop goes a great way. He might well cry if it were carried to mar- ket. The seed of weeds is no longer in his soil. He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines. He keeps a cat © in his barn to catch the mice. He indulges in no luxury of food or dress or furniture, yet he is not penurious but merely simple. If his sister dies before him, he may have to go to the almshouse in his old age; yet he is not poor, for he does not want riches. He gets out of each manipulation in the farmers’ operations a fund of enter- tainment which the speculating drudge hardly knows. With never-failing rheumatism and trembling hands, he seems yet to enjoy perennial health. Though he never reads a book, — since he has finished the “ Naval Monument,” — he speaks the best of English.

Sunday. I noticed on Friday, October 3d, that the willows generally were green and unchanged. The red maples varied from green through yellow to bright red. The black cherry was green inclining to yellow. (I speak of such trees as I chanced to see.) The apple trees, green but shedding their leaves like most of the trees. Elm, a dingy yellow. White ash, from green ‘to dark purple or mulberry. White oak, green inclining to yellow. Tupelo, reddish yellow and red; tree bushed about the head, limbs small and slanting downward. Some maples when ripe are yellow or whitish yellow, others reddish yellow, others bright red, by the accident of the season or position, — the more or less light and sun, being on the edge or in the midst of the wood; just as the fruits are more or less deeply colored. Birches, green and yellow. Swamp white oak, a yellowish green. Black ash, greenish yellow and now sered by frost. Bass, sered yellowish. | Color in the maturity of foliage is as variable and little characteristic as naturalists have found it to be for distinguishing fishes and quadrupeds, etc. Observed that the woodchuck has two or more holes, a rod or two apart: one, or the front door, where the excavated sand is heaped up; another, not so easily dis- covered, very small, round, without any sand about it, — being that by which he emerged, — smaller directly at the surface than beneath, on the principle by which a well is dug,’ making as small a hole as possible at the surface to prevent caving. About these holes is now seen their manure, apparently composed chiefly of the remains of crickets, which are seen crawling over the sand. Saw a very fat woodchuck on a wall, evidently prepared to go into winter quarters.’ Still purplish asters, and late goldenrods, and fragrant life-everlasting, and purple gerardia, great bidens, eic., etc. The dogwood by the Corner road has lost every leaf, its bunches of dry greenish berries hanging straight down from the bare stout twigs as if their peduncles were broken. It has assumed its winter aspect, —a mithridatic look. The prinos berries are quite red.° The panicled hawkweed is one of those yellowish spheri- cal or hemispherical fuzzy-seeded plants which you see about the wood-paths and fields at present, which how- ever only a strong wind can blow far. Saw by the path- side beyond the Conant spring that singular jelly-like sort of mushroom which I saw last spring while survey- ing White’s farm; now red, globular, three quarters of an inch in diameter, covering the coarse moss by the ruts on the path-side with jelly-covered seeds( ?). 2 p. M.— To the high open land between Bateman’s Pond and the lime-kiln. It is a still, cloudy afternoon, rather cool. As I go past Cheney’s boat-house, the river looks lighter than the sky. The butternuts have shed nearly all their leaves, and their nuts are seen black against the sky. The white oaks are turned a reddish brown in some valleys. The Norway cinquefoil and a smaller cinquefoil are still in blossom, and also the late buttercup. My companion remarked that the land (for the most part consisting of decayed orchards, huckleberry pastures, and forests) on both sides of the old Carlisle road, uneven and undulating like the road, appeared to be all in motion like the traveller, travelling on with him. Found a wild russet apple, very good, of peculiar form, flattened at the poles. Some red maples have entirely lost their leaves. The black birch is straw-colored.* The rocks in the high open pasture are peculiar and interesting to walk over, for, though presenting broad and flat surfaces, the strata are perpendicular, producing a grained and curled appearance, — this rocky crown like a hoary head covered with curly hair, —or it is like walking over the edges of the leaves of a vast book. I’ wonder how these rocks were ever worn even thus smooth by the elements. The strata are remarkably serpentine or waving. It appears as if you were upon the axis of elevation, geologically speaking. I do not remember any other pasture in Concord where the rocks are so remarkable for this. What is that fleshy or knot-fleshy [?] root which we found in the soil on the rocks by Bateman’s Pond, which looked so edible? All meadows and swamps have been remarkably dry this year, and are still, notwithstanding the few showers and rainy days. Witch-hazel now in bloom. I perceive the fragrance of ripe grapes in the air, and after a little search discover the ground covered with them, — where the frost has stripped the vines of leaves, —still fresh and plump and perfectly ripe. The little conical burs of the agrimony stick to my clothes. The pale lobelia still blooms freshly. The rough hawkweed holds up its globes of yellowish fuzzy seeds as well as the panicled. The clouds have cleared away, the sun come out, and it is warmer and very pleasant. The declining sun, falling on the willows, etc., below Mrs. Ripley’s and on the water, produces a rare, soft light, such as I do not often see, a greenish yellow.? The milkweed seeds are in the air. I see one in the river, which a minnow occasionally jostles. Stood near a small rabbit, hardly half grown, by the old Carlisle road. I hear the red-wing blackbirds by the riverside again, as if it were a new spring. They appear to have come to bid farewell. The birds appear to depart with the com- ing of the frosts, which kill vegetation and, directly or indirectly, the insects on which they feed. The American bittern (Ardea minor) flew across the river, trailing his legs in the water, scared up by us. This, according to Peabody, is the boomer (stake-driver). In their sluggish flight they can hardly keep their legs up. Wonder if they Can soar. 8p.mM.— To Cliffs. Moon three-quarters full. The nights now are very still, for there is hardly any noise of birds or of insects. The whip-poor-will is not heard, nor the mosquito; only the occasional lisping of some sparrow. The moon gives not a creamy but white, cold light, through which you can see far distinctly. About villages you hear the bark of dogs instead of the howl of wolves. When I descend into the valley by Wheeler’s grain-field, I find it quite cold. The sand slopes in the Deep Cut gleam coldly as if covered with rime. As I go through the Spring Woods I perceive a sweet, dry scent from the underwoods like that of the fragrant life-everlasting. I suppose it is that. To appreciate the moonlight you must stand in the shade and see where a few rods or a few feet distant it falls in between the trees. It is a “milder day,” made for some inhabitants whom you do not see. The fairies are a quiet, gentle folk, invented plainly to inhabit the moonlight. I frequently see a light on the ground within thick and dark woods where all around is in shadow, and haste forward, expecting to find some decayed and phosphorescent stump, but find it to be some clear moonlight that falls in between some crevice in the leaves. As moonlight is to sunlight, so are the fairies to men. Standing on the Cliffs, no sound comes up from the woods. The earth has gradually turned more north- ward; the birds have fled south after the sun, and this impresses me, as well by day as by night, as a deserted country. There is a down-like mist over the river and pond, and there are no bright reflections of the moon or sheeniness from the pond in consequence, all the light being absorbed by the low fog.