10 October 1853 – 16 October 1853

This morning it is very pleasant and warm. There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney’s field, faintly warbling, — robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning them- selves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight and the wind of yesterday. The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a remi- niscence of the spring. Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow now and falling fast. They come down in showers on the least touching of the tree. I was obliged to cut a small one while surveying the Bedford road to-day. What singularly and variously formed leaves! For the most part three very regular long lobes, but also some simple leaves; but here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb. They next turn a dark cream- color. } Father saw to-day in the end of a red oak stick in his wood-shed, three and a half inches in diameter, which was sawed yesterday, something shining. It is lead, either the side of a bullet or a large buckshot just a quarter of an inch in diameter. It came from the Ministerial Lot in the southwest part of the town, and we bought the wood of Martial Miles. It is com- pletely and snugly buried under some twelve or fifteen layers of the wood, and it appears not to have pene- trated originally more than its own thickness, for there is a very close fit all around it, and the wood has closed over it very snugly and soundly, while on every other side it is killed, though snug for an eighth of an inch around it.

To-day I have had the experience of bor- rowing money for a poor Irshman who wishes to get his family to this country. One will never know his neighbors till he has carried a subscription paper among them. Ah! it reveals many and sad facts to stand in this relation to them. To hear the selfish and cowardly excuses some make, — that if they help any they must help the Irishman who lives with them, — and him they are sure never to help! Others, with whom public opinion weighs, will think of it, trust- ing you never will raise the sum and so they will not be called on again; who give stingily after all. What a satire in the fact that you are much more inclined to call on a certain slighted and so-called crazy woman in moderate circumstances rather than on the president of the bank! But some are generous and save the town from the distinction which threatened it, and some even who do not lend, plainly would if they could.

Friday. A Mr. Farquhar of Maryland came to see me; spent the day and the night. Fine, clear Indian-summer weather.

Saturday. Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise. And now, when the morning wind rises, how the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost! They suddenly form thick beds or carpets on the ground in this gentle air, —or without wind, — just the size and form of the tree above. Silvery cinquefoil.

Sunday. The third pleasant day. Hunter's Moon. Walked to White Pond. The Polygonum dumetorum in Tarbell’s Swamp lies thick and twisted, rolled together, over the loose raised twigs on the ground, as if woven over basketwork, though it is now all sere. The Marchantia polymorpha is still erect there. Viola ovata out. The Lysimachia stricta, with its long bulb- lets in the axils, how green and fresh by the shore of the pond!