Log Search Results

  The early thalictrum has been in bloom some time. Perceive the rank smell of brakes. Observe the yellow bark of the barberry . . .

  The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms, yet the air is fresh as from the salt water. The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown. To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer . . .

I duly received your package and letter, and immediately   handed over the former to C. Bissell Editor of the Whig Review, asking him to examine it fully and tell me what he could give for it, which he promised to do. Two or three days afterward, I left for the West without having heard from him. This morning, without having seen your letter, having reached home at 1 o’clock, I went to Bissell at 9, and asked him about the matter. He said he had not read all the MSS, but had part of it, and inquired if I would be willing to have him print part and pay for it. I told him I could not consent without consulting you, but would thank him to make me a proposition in writing, which I would send you. He said he would do so very soon, whereupon I left him.

  I hope you will acquit me of negligence in the matter, though I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your package. 1 did not, simply because I was greatly hurried, trying to get away, and because I momently expected some word from Bissell.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  No breaking away, but the clouds have ceased to drop rain awhile and the birds are very lively. The waters are dark, and our attention is confined to earth. Saw two striped snakes deliberately drop from the stone bank wall into the river at Hubbard’s Bridge and remain under water while we looked. Do not perceive the meadow fragrance in this wet weather. A high blueberry bush by roadside beyond the bridge very full of blossoms. It has the more florid and blossoming effect because the leaves are few and quite distinct, or standing out from the flowers—the countless inverted white mugs (in rows and everywhere as on counters or shelves) with their peculiar green calyxes. If there are as many berries as blossoms we shall fare well . . .

  Pipe-grass equisetum. Buttercups now densely spot the churchyard. Now for the fragrance of firs and spruce.

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Horse-radish, several days; rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. How genial must nature be to it! It makes the revolution of the seasons seem a rapid whirl. How quickly and densely it clothes the earth! Thus early it suggests the harvest and fall. At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light . . .

  Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads. The young white lily pads are now red and crimson above . . .

  At Kalmia Swamp.—Nemopanthes, apparently several days, and leaf say before tupelo. White spruce pollen one or two days at least, and now begins to leaf. To my surprise the Kalmia ylauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early . . .

  I have received your four books & what is more I have read them. Olmstead was the only entire stranger. His book I think might have been shortened-& if he had indeed written only one word instead of ten—I should have liked it better. Of your own book I will say nothing but I will ask you a question, which perhaps may be a very ignorant one. I have observed a few lines about [sentence unfinished].

  Now there is something here unlike anything else in these pages. Are they absolutely your own, or whose? And afterward you shall hear what I think of them. Walt Whitmans poems have only been heard of in Eggland to be laughed at & voted offensive—Here are “Leaves” indeed which I can no more understand than the book of Enoch or the inedited Poems of Daniel! I cannot believe such a man lives unless I actually touch him. He is further ahead of me in yonder west than Buddha is behind me in the Orient. I find reality & beauty mixed with not a little violence & coarseness both of which are to me effeminate. I am amused at his views of sexual energy—which however are absurdly false. I believe that rudeness & excitement in the act of generation are injurious to the issue. The man appears to me not to know how to behave himself. I find the gentleman altogether left out of the book Altogether these leaves completely puzzle me. Is there actually such a man as Whitman? Has anyone seen or handled him? His is a tongue “not understanded” of the English people. It is the first book I have ever seen which I should call ‘a new book’ & this I would sum up the impression it makes upon me.

  While I am writing, Prince Albert & Duke Constantine are reviewing the guards in a corner of St James Park. I hear the music. About two hours ago I took a turn round the Park before breakfast & saw the troops formed. The varieties of colour gleamed fully out from their uniforms. They looked like an Army of soldier butterflies just dropped from the lovely green trees under which they marched. Never saw the trees look so green before as they do this spring. Some of the oaks incredibly so. I stool before some of the other day in Richmond & was obliged to punch myself & ask ‘is this oak tree really growing on the earth they call so bad & wicked an earth; & itself so undeniably & astonishingly fresh & fair”? It did not look like magic. It was magic.

  I have had a thousand strange experiences lately—most of them delicious & some almost awful. I seem to do so much in my life when I am doing nothing at all. I seem to be hiving up strength all the while as a sleeping man does; who sleeps & dreams & strengthens himself unconsciously; only sometimes half-awakes with a sense of cool refreshment. Sometimes it is wonderful to me that I say so little & somehow cannot speak even to my friends! Why all the time I was at Concord I never could tell you much of all I have seen & done! I never could somehow tell you anything! How ungrateful to my guardian genius to think of any of it trivial or superfluous! But it always seemed already told & long ago said. What is past & what is to come seems as it were all shut up in some very simple but very dear notes of music which I never can repeat.

  Tonight I intend to hear Mr. [Neal] Dow the American lecture in Exeter Hall. I believe it is tonight. But I go forearmed against him—being convinced in my mind that a good man is all the better for a bottle of Port under his belt every day of his life.

  I heard Spurgeon the Preacher the other day.He said some very good things: among others “If I can make the bells ring in one heart I shall be content.” Two young men not behaving themselves, he called them as sternly to order as if they were serving under tim. Talking of Jerusalem he said that “every good man had a mansion of his own there & a crown that would fit no other head save his.” That I felt was true. It is the voice of Spurgeon that draws more than his matter. His organ is very fine—but I fear he is hurting it by preaching to too large & frequent congregations. I found this out—because he is falling into two voices the usual clerical infirmity.

  The bells—church bells are ringing somewhere for the queens birthday they tell me. I have not a court-guide at hand to see if this is so. London is cram-full. Not a bed! Not a corner! After all the finest sight is to see such numbers of beautiful girls riding about & riing well. There are certainly no women in the world like ours. The men are far inferior to them.

  I am still searching after an abode & really my adventures have been most amusing. One Sussex farmer had a very good little cottage close to Battle—but he kept “a few horses & a score or two of Pigs” under the very windows. I remarked at his stables were very filthy. The man started hard at me -as an English farmer only can stare: ie, as a man stares who is trying to catch a thought which is always running away from him. At last he said striking his stick on the ground—“But that is why I keep the Pigs. I want their dung for my hop-grounds” We could not arrange it after that. I received a very kind note today from Concord informing me that there was a farm to be sold on the hill just over your river & nearly opposite your house. But it is out of the question of buying land by Deputy! I have however almost decided to settle finally in America. There are many reasons for it. I think of running over in the trial-trip of the Great Eastern which will be at the close of the year. She is either to be the greatest success -or else to sink altogether without more ado! She is to be something decided. I was all over her the other day. The immense creature musical with the incessant tinkling of hammers is as yet unconscious of like. By measurement she is larger than the ark. From the promenade of her decks you see the town & trade of London; the river—(the sacred river) —; Greenwich with its park & palace; the vast town of Southward & the continuation of it at Deptford; the Sydenham palace & the Surrey hills. Altogether a noble Poem. Only think I am losing all my teeth. All my magnificent teeth are going. I now begin to know I have had good teeth. This comes of too many cups of warm trash. If I had held to cold drinks—they would have lasted me out; but the effeminacy of tea coffee chocolate & sugar has been my bane. Miserable wretches were they who invented these comforters of exhaustion! They could not afford wine & beer. Hence God to punish them for their feeble heards takes away the grinders from their representatives one of whom I have been induced to come. But, Thoreau, if ever I live again I vow never so much as to touch anything warm. It is as dangerous as to take a Poll which I am convinced is a most immoral custom. Give me ale for breakfast & caret or Port or ale again for dinner. Should then have a better conscience & not fear to lose my teeth any more than my tongue.

  Farewell Thoreau. Success & the county of goods attend you

  Yrs ever
  Thos Chol.ley

  Eleocharis tenuis in bloom, apparently the earliest elcocharis. The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color . . .

  9 A.M.—To Easterbrooks Country . . .

  5 P.M.—River five eighths of an inch below summer level (Journal, 13:314).

  We have just got here; it is now about quarter past eleven, & we arrived here about quarter before ten. We had a very pleasant passage up the river. The cars left Chicago, Thursday morning about ten o’clock and we got to Dunleith at 20 minutes after six in the evening and went onto the boat “Itasca” & got our suppers, then I went on shore and got a few minerals out of the bluff and also a few flowers, when I went back to the boat and went to bed. The boat left Dunleith about 8:30 in the morning and went over to Dubuque across the river, and got under way about 9 o’clock in the morning We got to Prairie du Chien about 5 P.M. and had to wait till 8 P.M. for the cars with were late; in the morning we stopped at Brownsville, the first town on the river in Minnesota, about five o’clock, and at about four in the afternoon we entered Lake Pepin, arrived at Red Wing at about 7:30 P.M. and a little while after they left there we went to bed. The boat got to St. Paul about 2 or 3 o’clock this morning; we left it at six and went up in town to the American House where we got breakfast at 7:30 and at about 8:30 we left in the stage coach in a driving rain-storm and go here as I said before. The two days which we had on the river were the most beautiful days we have had this spring, they were very warm and not a bit of wind till late yesterday afternoon when a little breeze came up and sometime in the night it commenced to rain. When the sun rose this morning I thought it was going to clear off but about seven it commenced to rain and it is raining very hard now but I guess it will clear off and be a pleasant day to-morrow.

  On both sides of the Mississippi all the way from Dunleith to St. Paul there are high bluffs from 150 ft. to 250 ft. in height and from one to five miles distant from each other. They are generally pretty steep and in some places very steep and high cliffs so as to make it impossible to climb them. Where they are farthest apart the river has several different channels made by low islands in the water, and covered by the water when it is high, which are covered with thick woods. From the tops of the luffs the country lays on every side level and most[ly] prairie with a little wood on it in different places.

  We are at a house here called Tremont House, and from the window of my room I can see a little bit of the Falls of St. Anthony, though not enough to know how they look.

  I write with a pencil because my ink bottle is stuck to-gether and I cannot get it open.

  I do not know any more to say now excepting that I am well and Mr. Thoreau is pretty well too. From your loving son,

Horace Mann.

  P.S. I thought I would write a little more before I sent my letter. It is now after supper. I had a good nap in the afternoon for I slept about 3 hours. I then waked up and went down to see the Falls of St. Anthony. I will draw a little plan of them so you can see about how they lie. [He here includes a brief sketch.] The fall is divided by Hennepin Island named after a Jesuit missionary, the first white man who ever saw them and who named them, arriving on St. Anthony’s day. A little above this island is Nicholas [Nicollet] Island and above that Boom Island and the dotted line in the River represents a boom made to catch logs and keep them from going over the falls. (Look out the meaning of Boom in a dictionary). Below the falls are two or three little, inaccessible islands which will some time be entirely washed away, I think, for they seem to be going slowly now. After supper I went up onto the prairie back of the and got a few flowers for Mr. Thoreau. He is doing very well now and I think will be a great deal better before long.