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  Can you not without injurious delay to the shingling give a quarter or a half hour tomorrow morning to the direction of the Carpenter who builds Mrs [Lucy Jackson] Brown’s fence? [Isaac] Cutler has sent another man, & will not be here to repeat what you told him so that the new man wants new order. I suppose he will be on the ground at 7, or a little after & Lidian shall keep your breakfast warm.

  But do not come to the spoiling of your day.

  R. W. E.

  2 P. M.—To the Marlborough road. This day is very warm, yet not bright like the last, but hazy. Picked up an Indian gouge on Dennis’s Hill . . . By the side of J. P. Brown’s grain-field I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible . . .

  The farmers are ditching,—redeeming more meadow,—getting corn, collecting their apples, threshing, etc . . . This warm day is a godsend to the wasps. I see them buzzing about the broken windows of deserted buildings, as Jenny Dugan’s,—the yellow-knotted . . . An arrowhead at the desert.

  Spergula arvensis—corn-spurry (some call it tares)—at the acorn tree. Filled my pockets with acorns. Found another gouge on Dennis’s Hill. To have found the Indian gouges and tasted sweet acorns,—is it not enough for one afternoon? The sun set red in haze, visible fifteen minutes before setting, and the moon rose in like manner at the same time. This evening, I am obliged to sit with my door and window open, in a thin coat, which I have not done for three weeks at least. A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village. The boys are heard at play in the street now, at 9 o’clock, in greater force and with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute. There is more fog than usual. The moon is full. The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long, low black clouds, the fog being the color of the sky.

  The autumnal tints about the pond are now perfect. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water. Why should so many be yellow? I see the browner yellow of the chestnuts on Pine Hill. The maples and hickories are a clearer yellow. Some white oaks are red. The shrub oaks are bloody enough for a ground. The red and black oaks are yet green . . .

  At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, on Emerson Heater Piece trees. They are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them . . .

  Sophia brings home large freshly ripe thimble-berries, with some unripe, a second crop, apparently owing to the abundance of rain for the last six weeks.

  Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. The changing red maples along the river are past their prime now, earlier than generally elsewhere. They are much faded, and many leaves are floating on the water . . .