19 January 1852 – 25 January 1852

I. felt a little wonder the other night that the large man went so as a matter of course with the human race, that he did not suspect that he belonged to some other genus, that he did not go off with some menagerie, with the elephant or the camelopard. You do not have to go far, to grow much, to get beyond the sphere of humanity. Why he should exist as a sort of attaché to the human race. Where was the rest of his family ? He was, as it were, astray. There is something comically pathetic about it. What made him think that he belonged to the human race? Did he gradu- ally grow up to that faith? His was a vegetable growth. His face lacked expression. When his large features were done, his face still bulged out and grew this way and that, just hike a mammoth squash which magni- fies all its warts. Great growth of body suggests the vegetable. He was pumpkin pine, sycamore. The extra growth was squash and pumpkin all. It was more flesh than his soul could animate. There is some- thing monstrous even about his thoughts. The snow, which has drifted badly, ceasing about 2 o'clock, I went forth by way of Walden road, whither no sleigh or sled had passed this day, the fine, dry snow blowing and drifting still. It was pleasant to make the first tracks in this road through the woods, where all the road, except a faint depression, two long slight valleys, marking the ruts, was obliterated, — a smooth, white plain between the bordering woods, which only a few dry oak leaves coursed over. I sank into the snow for long distances more than three feet at each step. From Bare Hill I looked into the west, the sun still fifteen minutes high. The snow blowing far off in the sun, high as a house, looked like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning. I came across lots through the dry white powder from Britton’s camp. Very cold on the causeway and on the hilltops. The low western sky an Indian red, after the sun was gone.

Walked down the Boston road. It was good to look off over the great unspotted fields of snow, the walls and fences almost buried in it and hardly - a turf or stake left bare for the starving crows to light on. There is no track nor mark to mar its purity be- yond the single sled track, except where, once in half a mile, some traveller has stepped aside for a sleigh to pass. The farmers nowadays can cart out peat and muck over the frozen meadows. Somewhat analogous, me- thinks,. the scholar does; drives in with tight-braced energy and winter cheer on to his now firm meadowy grounds, and carts, hauls off, the virgin loads of fer- tilizing soil which he threw up in the warm, soft sum- mer. We now bring our muck out of the meadows, but it was thrown up first in summer. ‘The scholar’s and the farmer’s work are strictly analogous. Easily he now conveys, sliding over the snow-clad ground, great loads of fuel and of lumber which have grown in many summers, from the forest to the town. He deals with the dry hay and cows, the spoils of sum- mer meads and fields, stored in his barns, doling it out from day to day, and manufactures milk for men. When I see the farmer driving into his barn-yard with a load of muck, whose blackness contrasts strangely with the white snow, I have the thoughts which I have described. He is doing like myself. My barn-yard is my journal. I do not know but it is too much to read one news- paper in a week, for I now take the weekly Tribune, and for a few days past, it seems to me, I have not dwelt in Concord; the sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.’ To read of things distant and sounding betrays us into slighting these which are then apparently near and small. -We learn to look abroad for our mind and spirit’s daily nutriment, and what is this dull town to me? what are these plain fields and the aspects of this earth and these skies? All summer and far into the fall I uncon- sciously went by the newspapers and the news, and now I find it was because the morning and the evening were full of news to me. My walks were full of inci- dents. I attended not to the affairs of Europe, but to my own affairs in Concord fields.? To see the sun rise or go down every day would pre- serve us sane forever, — so to relate ourselves, for our mind’s and body’s health, to a universal fact.* Last spring our new stone bridge was said to be about to fall. The selectmen got a bridge architect to look at it and, acting on his advice, put up a barrier and warned travellers not to cross it. Of course, I be- lieved with the rest of my neighbors that there was no immediate danger, for there it was standing, and the barrier knocked down, that travellers might go over, ? [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies, p. 472; Mise., Riv. 275.] as they did with few exceptions. But one day, riding that way with another man, and reflecting that I had never looked into the condition of the bridge myself, and if it should fall with us on it, I should have reason to say what a fool I was to go over when I was warned, I made him stop on this side, merely for principle’s sake, and walked over while he rode before, and I got in again at the other end. I paid that degree of respect to the advice of the bridge architect and the warning of the selectmen. It was my companion’s daily thor- oughfare. Greeley says of London, “The morning to sleep, the afternoon to business, and the evening to enjoyment, seems the usual routine with the favored classes.” They have no morning life then. They are afternoon men. To begin the day at noon! The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.

Having occasion to get up and light a lamp in the middle of a sultry night, — perhaps it was to exterminate the mosquito race, — I observed a stream of large black ants passing up and down one of the bare corner posts, those descending having their large white larvee 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 offspring to a cooler place by night. They had evidently taken and communicated the resolution to im- prove the coolness of the night to remove their young ~ to a cooler and safer locality. One stream running up, another down, with great industry. But why I changed? why I left the woods? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. I do not know any better how I ever came to go there. Perhaps it is none of my business, even if it is yours. Perhaps I wanted a change. There was a little stagna- tion, it may be. About 2 o’clock in the afternoon the world’s axle creaked as if it needed 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, I might live there forever. One would think twice before he accepted heaven on such terms. A ticket to Heaven must include tickets to Limbo, Pur- gatory, and Hell. Your ticket to the boxes admits you to the pit also. And if you take a cabin passage, you can smoke, at least forward of the engine, — you have the liberty of the whole boat. But no, I do not wish for a ticket to the boxes, nor to take a cabin passage. I will rather go before the mast and on the deck of the world. I have no desire to go “abaft the engine.” * What is it that I see from one mile to two miles dis- tant in the horizon on all sides from my window, but the woods, which still, almost without exception, encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last? Is this a universal and permanent feature? Have the old- est countries retained it? Is it not an interesting and important question whether these are decreasing or not? Look out what window I will, my eyes rest in the distance on a forest! Is this fact of no significance? Is this circumstance of no value? Why such pains in old countries to plant gardens and parks? A certain sample of wild nature, a certain primitiveness. One man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names; said he would be at the expense of it!!! Did he consider what the expense of it would be? As if it were of any use, when a man failed to make any memorable impression on you, for him to leave his name. But it may be that he writes a good hand, who had not left any fame. No! I kept a book to put their fames in. I was at the expense of it.’ The milkman is now filling his ice-house. The towns thus bordered, with a fringed and tas- selled border, each has its preserves. Methinks the town should have more supervision and control over its parks than it has. It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not. I must say that I do not know what made me leave the pond. I left it as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go; I left it for the same reason. How much botany is indebted to the Arabians! A great part of our common names of plants would ap- pear to be Arabic. Was it not fit that I should live on rice mainly, who loved so well to read the philosophy of India ? ? The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the plea- sures 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 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 overflowing sympathy while yet there is no intellectual communion. Could we not meet on higher ground with the same heartiness? It is dull work reading to one who does not apprehend you. (Walden, p. 169; Riv. 237, 238.] 2 (Walden, p. 67; Riv. 97.] 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 further from them. I shall not be the 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 1s of no use to he 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 harmonious 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. Thoughts accident- ally thrown together become a frame in which more may be developed and exhibited. Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, of keeping a journal, — that so we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves. My thoughts are my company. They have a certain individuality and separate existence, aye, per- sonality. Having by chance recorded a few discon- nected thoughts and then brought them into juxta- position, they suggest a whole new field in which it was possible to labor and to think. Thought begat thought. One mother-o’-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown. I love to look at Ebby Hubbard’s oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister’s Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods, though it is said that they are wasting. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. It is a sharp, cutting cold day, stiffening the face. Thermometers have lately sunk to 20°. 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. The surface of the snow in the fields is that of pretty large waves on a sea over which a summer breeze is sweeping. That in the preaching or mission of the Jesuits in Canada which converted the Indians was their sincer- ity. They could not be suspected of sinister motives. The savages were not poor observers and reasoners. The priests were, therefore, sure of success, for they had paid the price of it. We resist no true invitations; they are irresistible. 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 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.

The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village. One is now walking about and pecking the dung in the street in front of Frank Monroe’s. They remind me, as they sail along over the street, of the turkey buz- zards of the South, and perhaps many hard winters in succession would make them as tame. There is a vegetable life, as well as a spiritual and animal life, in us, for the hair and nails continue to grow after the anima has left the body, and the spirit- ual and animal life is dead. There is also probably an inorganic mineral life. The surface of the snow on the 20th was not yet dis- turbed, or rippled even, by the wind. P. M. — 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 mockingbird be heard one day inserting this strain in his medley? It intoxicates me. Orpheus is still alive. All poetry.and mythology revive. ‘The spirits of all bards sweep the strings. I hear the clearest sil- ver, lyre-like tones, Tyrtaean tones. I think of Menander and the rest. It is the most glorious music I ever heard. All those bards revive and flourish again in that five minutes in the Deep Cut. The breeze came through an oak still wearing 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, etc. Some come sweeping seemingly from further along the wire. The latent music of the earth had found here a vent. Music AMolian. There were two strings, in fact, one each side. I do not know but this will make me read the Greek poets. Thus, as ever, the finest uses of things are the accidental. Mr. Morse did not invent this music. I see where the squirrels have torn the pine cones in pieces to come at their seeds. And in some cases the mice (?) have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow. The Blue Hills of Milton are now white. Lindley, in Loudon, dismisses the winterberries by saying, “The species are low shrubs of little beauty.”’ Says nothing of the berry. 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 from too favorable a point of view. Just before sunset there were few clouds or specks to be seen in the western sky, but the sun gets down lower, and many dark clouds are made visible, their sides toward us being darkened. In the bright light they were but floating feathers of vapor; now they swell into dark evening clouds. It is a fair sunset, with many purplish fishes in the horizon, pinkish and golden with bright edges; hke a school of purplish whales, they sail or float down from the north; or like leopards’ skins they hang in the west. If the sun goes behind a cloud, it is still reflected from the least haziness or vapor in that part of the sky, the air is so clear; and the afterglow is remarkably long. And now the blaze is put out, and only ‘a few glowing clouds, like the flickering light of the fire, skirt the west. And now only the brands and embers, mixed with smoke, make an Indian red along the horizon. And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene. The thermometer was at 21° this morning. Some botanical names have originated In a mere blunder. Thus the Crtharerylum melanocardium of the West Indies, “called by the French fidéle, from its faithfulness or durability in building,” the English have corrupted into fiddle-wood, and so the genus goes. It is unfit for musical instruments. (Lindley.)

If thou art a writer, write as if thy time were short, for it is indeed short at the longest. Im- prove each occasion when thy soul is reached. Drain the cup of inspiration to its last dregs. Fear no intem- perance in that, for the years will come when other- wise thou wilt regret opportunities unimproved. The spring will not last forever. These fertile and expand- ing 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 received the gifts of the gods with too much indifference. Why did I not culti- vate those fields they introduced me to? Does nothing withstand 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 mood 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 reminis- cences! In thy journal let there never be a jest! To the earnest there is nothing ludicrous. P. M. — Down the Flint’s Pond road and return across. Where the mountains in the horizon are well wooded and the snow does not lodge, they still look blue. All but a narrow segment of the sky in the northwest and southeast being suddenly overcast by a passing kind of snow-squall, though no snow falls, I look into the clear sky with its floating clouds in the northwest as from night into day, now at 4 p. mM. The sun sets about five. Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown.’ Even the dry leaves are gregarious, and they col- lect in little heaps in the hollows in the snow, or even on the plane surfaces, driven in flocks by the wind. How like shrinking maidens wrapping their scarfs about them they flutter along! The oaks are made thus to retain their leaves, that they may play over the snow-crust and add variety to the winter landscape. If you wished to collect leaves, you would only have to make holes in the snow for traps. I see that my tracks are often filled two feet deep with them. They are blown quite across Walden on the wavy snow. Two flitting along together by fits and starts, now one running ahead, then another, remind me of squirrels. Mostly white oak leaves, but the other oaks, 2. e. espe- cially red oaks, also. There is a certain refinement or cultivation, even feminineness, suggested by the rounded lobes, the scalloped edge, of the white oak leaf, com- pared with the wild, brusque points of the red and black and scarlet and shrub oaks. Now I see a faint bluish tinge in the ruts, but it is warmer and there is a snow-bearing cloud over all. When the cars passed, I being on the pond (Wal- den), the sun was setting and suffusing the clouds far and near with rosy light. Even the steam from the engine, as its flocks or wreaths rose above the shadow of the woods, became a rosy cloud even fairer than the rest, but it was soon dissipated.

Sunday. 'The snow has been for some time more than a foot deep on a level, and some roads drifted quite full; and the cold for some weeks has been in- tense, as low as twenty and twenty-one degrees in the early morning. A Canadian winter. Some say that we have not had so long a spell of cold weather since °31, when they say it was not seen to thaw for six weeks. But last night and to-day the weather has moderated. It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon. The snow melts on the surface. The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer. The dog runs before us on the rail- road causeway and appears to enjoy it as much as ourselves. CC. remarks truly that most people do not distinguish between a pup and a dog, and treat both alike, though the former may not yet have a tooth in his head. When Sophia told R. Rice that Dr. B. said that Foster was an infidel and was injuring the young men, etc., “ Did he?” he observed. “ Well, he is a great man. He swims in pretty deep water, but it is n’t very ex- tensive.” When she added, “Mr. Frost says that Gar- rison had to apologize for printing Foster’s sermon,” he said, “Did he? Well, they may set as many back fires as they pee they won’t be of any use; they'll soon go out.” She said the selectmen were going to ask seven dollars instead of five for the hall. But he said that he would build them a hall, if they would engage to give him five dollars steadily. To be sure, it would not be quite so handsome as the present, but it should have the same kind of seats. 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, and the snow-drifts on the west side look like clouds. We turned down the brook at Heywood’s meadow. It was worth the 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 summer would look dark and perhaps turbid now sparkles like the lakes in Novem- ber. This water is the more attractive, since all around is deep snow. The brook here is full of cat-tails (Typha latijolia, reed-mace). I found, on pulling open or break- ing in my hand, as one would break bread, the still nearly 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 thus what was at first but a thimbleful of these dry flowerets, they suddenly took in air and flushed up like powder, expanding hke feathers and foam, filling and overflowing my hand, to which they imparted a sensation of warmth quite remarkable. I was astonished to see how a small quantity was expanded and inflated on being released and given to the air, and I could not be tired with repeating 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. Like a puff of powder it flashes up. You do not know at first where they all come 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 still will scrape the almost bare stem, still they overflow your hand as before. See it again, and try the combustibility of the pollen. As the flowerets are opening and liberating themselves, showing their red extremities, it has the effect of a changeable color. Ah, then, the brook beyond, its mppling waters and its sunny sands! They made me forget 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 melted as it fell perchance, and the rabbits had sprinkled the mud about on the snow. The sun reflected from the sandy, gravelly bottom sometimes a bright sunny streak no bigger than your finger, reflected from a ripple as from a prism, and the sunlight, reflected from a hundred points of the surface of the rippling brook, enabled me to realize summer. But the dog partly spoiled the transparency of the water by running in the brook. A pup that had never seen a summer brook. I am struck and attracted by the parallelism of the twigs of the hornbeam, fine parallelism. 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 on the south 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 prevailed 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 Conantum are bluish, somewhat like the holes in the snow, perchance. 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, notwithstand- ing, so clear. When I invert my head and look at the woods half a mile down the stream, they suddenly sink lower in the horizon and are removed 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 the same when T look up the stream. A bare hickory under Lee’s Cliff, seen against the sky, becomes an interesting, even beau- tiful, object to behold. I think where have I been stay- ing all these days. I will surely come here again. When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was com- pletely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines had run over the trees and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down the pond from west to east, it looked like an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled to the middle, lying on my back across the seats of my boat, in a summer forenoon, and looking into the sky above, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by my boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away thus, preferring thus to spend the most valued part of the day. For I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly. Nor do I regret that I did not spend more of them behind a counter or in the workshop or the teacher’s desk, in which last two places I have spent so many of them.’