28 November 1853 – 4 December 1853

Monday. Saw boys skating in Cambridge- port, — the first ice to bear. Settled with J. Munroe & Co., and on a new account placed twelve of my books with him on sale. I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published two hundred and ninety dollars and taken his receipt for it. This does not in- clude postage on proof-sheets, etc., etc. I have received from other quarters about fifteen dollars. This has been the pecuniary value of the book. Saw at the Natural History rooms the skeleton of a moose with horns. The length of the spinal processes (?) over the shoul- der was very great.' The hind legs were longer than the front, and the horns rose about two feet above the shoulders and spread between four and five, I judged. Dr. Harris described to me his finding a species of cicindela at the White Mountains this fall (the same he had found there one specimen of some time ago), supposed to be very rare, found at St. Peter’s River and at Lake Superior; but he proves it to be common near the White Mountains.

On Saturday, the 26th, a dog on whose collar the words -“ Milton Hill,” or equivalent ones, were engraved ran through the town, having, as the story went, bitten a boy in Lincoln. He bit several dogs in this town and was finally shot. Some of the dogs bitten have been killed, and rumor now says that the boy died yesterday. People are considerably alarmed. Some years ago a boy in Lincoln was bitten by a rac- coon and died of hydrophobia. I observed to Minott to-night that I did not think that our doctors knew how to cure this disease, but he said they could cure it, he had seen a man bitten who was cured. The story is worth telling, for it shows how much trouble the passage of one mad dog through the town may produce. It was when he was a boy and lived down below the old Ben Prescott house, over the cellar-hole on what is now Hawthorne’s land. The first he remembers a couple of men had got poles and were punching at a strange dog toward night under a barn in that neigh- borhood. The dog, which was speckled and not very large, would grow] and bite the pole, and they ran a good deal of risk, but they did not know that he was mad. At length they routed him, and he took to the road and came on towards town, and Minott, keeping his distance, followed on behind. When the dog got to the old Ben Prescott place, he turned up into the yard, where there were a couple of turkeys, drove them into a corner, bit off the head of one, and carried the body off across the road into the meadow opposite. They then raised the cry of “Mad dog.” He saw his mother and Aunt Prescott, two old ladies, coming down the road, while the dog was running the other way in the meadow, and he shouted to them to take care of themselves, for that dog was mad. The dog soon reéntered the road at some bars and held on toward town. Minott next saw Harry Hooper coming down the road after his cows, and he shouted to him to look out, for the dog was mad, but Harry, who was in the middle of the road, spread his arms out, one on each side, and, being short, the dog leaped right upon his open breast and made a pass at his throat, but missed it, though it frightened him a good deal; and Minott, coming up, exclaimed, “Why, you ’re crazy, Harry; if he ’d ’a’ bitten ye, *t would ’a’ killed ye.” When he got up as far as the red house or Curtis place, the dog was about in the middle of the road, and a large and stout old gentleman by the name of Fay, dressed in small-clothes, was coming down on the sidewalk. M. shouted to him also to take care of himself, for the dog was mad, and Fay said afterward that he heard him but he had always supposed that a mad dog would n’t turn out for anything; but when this dog was nearly abreast of him, he suddenly in- clined toward him, and then again inclined still more, and seized him by the left leg just below the knee, and Fay, giving him a kick with the other leg, tripped himself up; and when he was down, the dog bit him 4 in the right leg in the same place. Being by this time well frightened, and fearing that he would spring at his throat next, Fay seized the dog himself by his throat and held him fast, and called lustily for some- body to come and kill him. A man by the name of Lewis rushed out of the red house with an old axe and began to tap on the dog’s nose with it, but he was afraid to strike harder, for Fay told him not to hit him. Minott saw it all, but still kept his distance. Suddenly Fay, not knowing what he did, let go, and the man, giving the dog a blow across the back, ran into the house ; but, it being a dull meat axe, the dog trotted along, still toward town. He turned and went round the pond by Bowers’s and, going down to the brook by the roadside, lapped some water. Just then, Peter coming over the bridge, the dog reared up and growled at him, and he, seeing that he was mad, made haste through the bars out of his way and cut ‘across the fields to Reuben Brown’s. The dog went on, it being now between sundown and dark, to Peter Wheeler’s, and bit two cows, which after- ward died of hydrophobia, and next he went to where Nathan Stow now lives, and bit a goose in the wing, and so he kept on through the town. The next that was heard of him, Black Cato, that lived at the Lee place, now Sam Wheeler’s, on the river, was waked up about midnight by a noise among the pigs, and, having got up, he took a club and went out to see what was the matter. Looking over into the pen, this dog reared up at him, and he knocked him back into it, and, Jumping over, mauled him till he thought he was dead a 1853). AN INDIAN PESTLE 525 and then tossed him out. In the morning he thought he [would] go out and see whose dog he had killed, but lo! he had picked himself up, and there was no dog to be found. Cato was going out into the woods chopping that day, and as he was getting over a wall lined with brush, the same dog reared up at him once more, but this time, having heard of the mad dog, he was frightened and ran; but still the dog came on, and once or twice he knocked him aside with a large stone, till at length, the dog coming close to him, he gave him a blow which killed him; and lest he should run away again, he cut off his head and threw both head and body into the river. In the meanwhile Fay went home (to the Dr. Hey- wood house), drank some spirit, then went straight over to Dr. Heywood’s office and stayed there and was doctored by him for three weeks. The doctor cut out the mangled flesh and made various applications, and Fay cried like a baby, but he never experienced any further ill effects from the bite. P. M. — To J. P. Brown’s pond-hole. J. Hosmer showed me a pestle which his son had found this summer while plowing on the plain between his house and the river. It has a rude bird’s head, a hawk’s or eagle’s, the beak and eyes (the latter a mere prominence) serving for a knob or handle. It is affecting, as a work of art by a people who have left so few traces of them- selves, a step beyond the common arrowhead and pestle and axe. Something more fanciful, a step beyond pure utility. As long as I find traces of works of con- venience merely, however much skill they show, I am not so much affected as when I discover works which evince the exercise of fancy and taste, however rude. It is a great step to find a pestle whose handle is orna- mented with a bird’s-head knob. It brings the maker still nearer to the races which so ornament their um- ‘ brella and cane handles. I have, then, evidence in stone that men lived here who had fancies to be pleased, - and in whom the first steps toward a complete culture were taken. It implies so many more thoughts such -as I have. The arrowhead, too, suggests a bird, but a relation to it not in the least godlike. But here an Indian has patiently sat and fashioned a stone into the likeness of a bird, and added some pure beauty to that pure utility, and so far begun to leave behind him war, and even hunting, and to redeem himself from the savage state. In this he was leaving off to be savage. Enough of this would have saved him from extermination. I dug for frogs at Heart-leat Pond, but found none. The ice is two inches thick there, and already, the day being warm, is creased irregularly but agreeably on the upper surface. What is the law of these figures as on watered silks? Has it anything to do with the waves of the wind, or are they the outlines of the crystals as they originally shot, the bones of the ice? It would be worth the while to watch some water while freezing. What is that low yellowish, straw-colored sedge which is so dense in this pond now? I must look for frogs about springs, where Minott says he has dug them out. The andromeda leaves are a rich brown color now. It has been cloudy and milder this afternoon, but now I begin to see, under the clouds in the west horizon, a clear crescent of yellowish sky, and suddenly a glo- rious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape —russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. In addition to the clear- ness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and, none. being absorbed or dissipated in the heavens, but it being reflected both from the russet earth and the clouds, it is intensely bright, and all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year. It may not be warm, but must be clear and comparatively calm. I see now large insects in the calm, sunlit air over the sprout-lands. Cattle still abroad in the fields, though there is little to be got there. They say that young cattle can stand the cold and starvation best. If I am not mistaken, their coats have less sleekness than in the spring; they have a shaggy, frowzy, and nipped look, their hair stand- ing on end, and the sorrel color seems to predominate. Their pastures look as barren of nutriment as their own backs.

8 a. M. — To river, to examine roots. I rake up almost everywhere from the bottom of the river that very fresh and bright green ranunculus, the handsomely divided leaf. I ascertain this morning that that white root with eyes and slaty-tinged fibres and sharp leaves rolled up, found gnawed off and floating about muskrat-houses, is the root of the great yellow lily. The leaf-stalk is yellow, while that of the white lily is a downy or mildewy blue black. The yel- low lily root is, then, a principal item, it would seem, in their vegetable diet. I find that those large triangular or rhomboidal or shell-shaped eyes or shoulders on this root are the bases of leaf-stalks which have rotted off, but toward the upper end of the root are still seen decaying. They are a sort of abutment on which the leaf-stalk rested, and the fine black dots on them are the bases of the fine threads or fibres of the leaf-stalk, which, in the still living leaf-stalk, are distinguished by their purple color. These eyes, like the leaves, of course, are arranged spirally around the roots in parallel rows, In quincunx order, so that four make a diamond figure. The slate-tinged fibres spring from the bare white intervals between the bases of the leaves. Closely packed between, and protected by the under leaf- stalk, I find already the tender club-shaped yellow flower-bud a quarter of an inch in diameter, with a stem two inches long and wider than the bud. I am surprised to find these roots, even within to the bases of the leaves about the buds, infested with white grubs nearly half an inch long and minute, threadlike red- dish and speckled worms. Also on the fibres are trans- parent elliptical chrysalids, the color of a snail-shell, containing insects apparently just ready to fly. The white lly roots are more enveloped in down and fibre, a dark-blue or blackish down. I raked up one dark-brown root somewhat like a white lily, except that it was smooth and the leaf-stalks were very slender and the leaf-buds minute. Perhaps it was the kalmiana lily. I raked up one live clam in deep water, and could feel them like stones on the bottom. All these leaves’ are lightly rolled up in the form of arrowheads, as thus best prepared to pierce whatever obstacles the mud or water may present. There is a vast amount of decaying vegetable matter at the bottom of the river, and what I draw up on my rake emits a very offensive odor. P. M.— Down river by boat and inland to the green house beyond Blood’s. A mild and summery afternoon with much russet light on the landscape. I think it was a flock of low-warbling tree sparrows ’ which I saw amid the weeds beyond the monument, though they looked larger. I am attracted nowadays by the various withered | grasses and sedges, of different shades of straw-color and of various more or less graceful forms. That which I call fescue grass is quite interesting, gracefully bend- ing to the zephyr, and many others are very perfect and pure. Wool-grass is one of the largest and most con- - spicuous. I observe it msing thinly above the water in which itis feflected, two or three feet, and all its narrow rustling leaves stream southeasterly from the stems, though it 1s now quite calm, proving the preva-. Jence of northwesterly winds. An abundance of with- ered sedges and other coarse grasses, which in the sum- mer you scarcely noticed, now cover the low grounds, —the granary of the winter birds. A very different end they serve from the flowers which decay so early. Their rigid culms enable them to withstand the blasts of winter. Though divested of color, fairly bleached, they are not in the least decayed but seasoned and living like the heart-wood. Now, first since spring, I take notice of the clado- nia lichens, which the cool fall rains appear to have started. The Callitriche verna is perfectly fresh and green, though frozen in, in the pools. We are going across the Hunt and Mason pastures. The twigs of young cedars with apparently staminate buds have even a strawberry-like fragrance, and what a heavenly blue have the berries !—a peculiar light blue, whose bloom rubs off, contrasting with the green or purplish-brown leaves. I do not know so fine a pine grove as that of Mason’s. The young second-growth white pines are peculiarly soft, thick, and bushy there. They branch directly at the ground and almost horizontally, for the most part four or five large stems springing from the ground together, as if they had been broken down by cattle originally. But the result is a very dark and dense, almost impenetrable, but peculiarly soft and beautiful grove, which any gentleman might covet on his es- tate. We returned by the bridle-road across the pastures. When I returned to town the other night by the Walden road through the meadows from Brister’s Hill to the poorhouse, I fell to musing upon the origin of the meanders in the road; for when I looked straight before or behind me, my eye met the fences at a short distance, and it appeared that the road, instead of being built in a straight line across the meadows, as one might have expected, pursued a succession of curves like a cow-path. In fact, it was just such a meandering path as an eye of taste requires, and the landscape-gardener consciously aims to make, and the wonder is that a body of laborers left to themselves, without instruments or geometry, and perchance intending to make a straight road,—Jin short, that circumstances ordinarily, — will so commonly make just such a meandering road as the eye requires. A man advances in his walk somewhat as a river does, meanderingly, and such, too, is the progress of the race. The law that plants the rushes in waving lines along the edge of a pond, and that curves the pond- shore itself, incessantly beats against the straight fences and highways of men and makes them conform to the line of beauty which is most agreeable to the eye at last. But to return to the walk of the day. Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat. C. remarked it descending into the hollows immediately after sunset. A red house could hardly be distinguished at a dis- tance, but a white one appeared to reflect light on the landscape. At first we saw no redness in the sky, but only some peculiar dark wisp-like clouds in the west, but on rising a hill I saw a few red stains like veins of red quartz on a ground of feldspar. The river was perfectly smooth except the upwelling of its tide, and as we paddled home westward, the dusky yellowing sky was all reflected in it, together with the dun-colored clouds and the trees, and there was more light in the water than in the sky. The re- flections of the trees and bushes on the banks were wonderfully dark and distinct, for though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky. We were thus often enabled to steer clear of the overhanging bushes. It was an evening for the muskrats to be abroad, and we saw one, which dove as he was swimming rapidly, turning over like a wheel.

4 Pp. M.— To Cliffs. We may infer that every withered culm of grass or sedge, or weed that still stands in the fields, answers some purpose by standing.

As the stars, though spheres, present an out- line of many little points of light to our eyes, like a flower of light, so I notice to-night the horns of the new moon appear split. The skeleton which at first sight excites only a shud- der in all mortals becomes at last not only a pure but suggestive and pleasing object to science. The more we know of it, the less we associate it with any goblin of our imaginations. The longer we keep it, the less likely it is that any such will come to claim it. We dis- cover that the only spirit which haunts it is a universal intelligence which has created it In harmony with all nature. Science never saw a ghost, nor does it look for any, but it sees everywhere the traces, and it is itself the agent, of a Universal Intelligence. A communication to a newspaper, dated Bangor, 28th (November), says of the Penobscot: ‘The navigation is closed here, the anchor ice with the surface ice mak- ing an obstruction of several feet thickness. There are enclosed in the ice from 60 to 80 vessels with full car- goes, besides the steamers. . . . The ice obstruction extends about five miles,” etc. There is still no ice in the Concord River, or the skimming which forms along the shore in the night almost entirely disappears in the day. On the 30th I paddled on it in the afternoon, and there was not a particle of ice, and even in the morning my constantly wet hands were not cold. The latitude of Lynn church is 42° 27’ 51”. Calling Concord, at a venture, 42° 27’, Bangor being 44° 47’ 50”, the difference equals about 2° 21’. The length of a degree of latitude in Italy (43° 1’) being, according to Boscovich and Lemaire’s measurement, 68.998 Eng- lish miles, call it in this case 69 miles, and the differ- ence of latitude in miles between B. and C. is about 162 miles.

P. M.— Up river by boat to Clamshell Hill. Saw two tree sparrows on Monroe’s larch by the waterside. -Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to men- tion bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash. They were busily and very adroitly picking the seeds out of the larch cones. It would take man’s clumsy fingers a good while to get at one, and then only by breaking off the scales, but they picked them out as rapidly as if they were insects on the outside of the cone, uttering from time to time a faint, tinkling chip. I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank, pushing the sand behind them into the water. So they dig these now as places of re- treat merely, or for the same purpose as the cabins, apparently. One I explored this afternoon was formed in a low shore (Hubbard’s Bathing-Place), at a spot where there were no weeds to make a cabin of, and was apparently never completed, perhaps because the shore was too low.