28 November 1859 – 4 December 1859

P. M. — To E. Hubbard’s Wood. Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it “ivory- leaf.”) Is it not singular that probably only one tea- drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberry-tea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard’s old lot. This has been Hub- bard’s practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them. Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighbor- ing lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where itis. Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pur- sues. Itis to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, there- fore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.

P. M. —'To Copan. There is a white birch on Copan which has many of the common birch fungus of a very peculiar and re- markable form, not flat thus: but shaped like a bell or short horn, thus: as if composed of a more flowing material which )\ had settled downward like a drop. As C. said, they were shaped like icicles, especially those short and spreading ones about bridges. ~ Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unex- pectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.

I am one of a committee of four, viz. Simon Brown (Ex-Lieutenant-Governor), R. W. Emer- son, myself, and John Keyes (late High Sheriff), in- structed by a meeting of citizens to ask liberty of the selectmen to have the bell of the first parish tolled at the time Captain Brown is being hung, and while we shall be assembled in the town house to express our sympathy with him. I applied to the selectmen yester- day. Their names are George M. Brooks, Barzillai Hudson, and Julius Smith. After various delays they at length answer me to-night that they “are uncertain whether they have any control over the bell, but that, wm any case, they will not give their consent to have the bell tolled.” Beside their private objections, they are influenced by the remarks of a few individuals. Dr. Bartlett tells me that Rockwood Hoar said he “hoped no such foolish thing would be done,”’ and he also named Stedman Buttrick, John Moore, Cheney (and others added Nathan Brooks, senior, and Francis Wheeler) as strongly opposed to it; said that he had heard “five hundred” (!) damn me for it, and that he had no doubt that if it were done some counter-demon- stration would be made, such as firing minute-guns. The doctor himself is more excited than anybody, for he has the minister under his wing. Indeed, a con- siderable part of Concord are in the condition of Virginia to-day, — afraid of their own shadows. I see in E. Hubbard’s gray oak wood, four rods from the old wall line and two or three rods over the brow of the hill, an apparent downy woodpecker’s nest in a dead white oak stub some six feet high. It is made as far as I can see, like that which I have, but looks quite fresh, and I see, by the very numerous fresh white chips of dead wood scattered over the recently fallen leaves beneath, that it must have been made since the leaves fell. Could it be a nuthatch or chickadee’s work ? ' This has been a very pleasant month, with quite a number of Indian-summer days, — a pleasanter month than October was. It is quite warm to-day, and as I go home at dusk on the railroad causeway, I hear a hylodes peeping.

Suddenly quite cold, and freezes in the house. | Rode with a man this forenoon who said that if he did not clean his teeth when he got up, it made him sick all the rest of the day, but he had found by late experience that when he had not cleaned his teeth for several days they cleaned themselves. I assured him that such was the general rule, — that when from any cause we were prevented from doing what we had commonly thought indispensable for us to do, things cleaned or took care of themselves. X + was betrayed by his eyes, which had a glaring film over them and no serene depth into which you could look. Inquired particularly the way to Emer- son’s and the distance, and when I told him, said he knew it as well as if he saw it. Wished to turn and pro- ceed to his house. Told me one or two things which he asked me not to tell S.t Said, “I know I am insane,” —and I knew it too. Also called it “nervous excite- ment.” At length, when I made a certain remark, he said, “I don’t know but you are Emerson; are you? You look somewhat like him.” He said as much two or three times, and added once, “But then Emerson would n’t lie.” Finally put his questions to me, of Fate, etc., etc., as if I were Emerson. Getting to the woods, I remarked upon them, and he mentioned my name, but never to the end suspected who his com- panion was. Then “proceeded to business,’’ — “since the time was short,’”’ — and put to me the questions he was going to put to Emerson. His insanity exhibited it- self chiefly by his incessant excited talk, scarcely allow- ing me to interrupt him, but once or twice apologizing for his behavior. What he said was for the most part connected and sensible enough. When I hear of John Brown and his wife weeping at length, it is as if the rocks sweated.

Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence. that it was Francis Jackson Merriam, one of John Brown’s men, on his way to Canada. See the account in Familiar Letters, pp. 365-367; Riv. 422-495.]