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Evening by river to Ed. Hosmer’s . . . Returning after ten, by moonlight, see the bullfrogs lying at full length on the pads where they trump.

“Its very nakedness has power
To aid the hour,”

  Says old Sir Walter. However, the “old Bobbin Woman was steady to her Bible,” where each page unfolded words of comfort and assurance. Yet the memory of intelligence and extensive mentality will never fail to give a vivid pleasure to reflection,—if shaded by the faith of future uncertainties,—’t is well to admit the decrees of unerring rectitude. If you write to M.E. it will brighten the solitude so desired. Had I been detaining by nothing but weather! but I must pack up my daylight.

  Mary Emerson

  The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellowish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping. Hypericum corymbosum. Am caught in the rain and take shelter under the thick white pine by Lee’s Cliff. I see thereunder an abundance of chimaphila in bloom. It is a beautiful flower, with its naked umbel of crystalline purplish-white flowers, their disks at an angle with the horizon . . .

  Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook in the northwest corner of Concord, there a stagnant river owing to dams . . .

  Reached Weare and put up at a quiet and agreeable house, without any sign or barroom . . .

  No fog this morning . At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird (?), ushering in the day. Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year,—after a sultry night and before a sultry day,—when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer’s sun or the obscuring haze. The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak . . .

  A cold fog. These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air. The frogs seem glad to bury themselves in it. The dewy cobwebs are very thick this morning, little napkins of the fairies spread on the grass . . .

  P. M.—To Walden and Cliffs via almshouse . . . The evergreen-forest bird at old place in white pine and oak tops, top of Brister’s Hill on right. I think it has black wings with white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? The unmistakable tanager sits on the oaks at midday and sings with a hoarse red-eye note, pruit, prewee, prewa, prear, preā (often more notes), some of the latter notes clearer, without the r. It does not sing so continuously as the red-eye . . .