Log Search Results

  There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones . . .

  An overcast and moist day, but truly April—no sun all clay—like such as began methinks on Fast-Day, or the 5th. You cannot foretell how it will turn out. The river has been steadily rising since the first of April, though you would not think there had been rain enough to cause it. It now covers the meadows pretty respectably. It is perhaps because the warm rain has been melting the frost in the ground. This may be the great cause of the regular spring rise . . .

  At 8 A.M.—Took caterpillar’s eggs from the apple tree at the Texas house and found about thirty.

  It being completely overcast, having rained a little, the robins, etc., sing at 4:30 as at sundown usually. The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections.

  8 A.M.—Up Assabet.

  See one striped squirrel chasing another round and round the Island, with a faint squeak from time to time and a rustling of the dry leaves. They run quite near to the water.

  Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness . . .

  P.M.—Sail to Hill by Bedford line.

  Wind southwest and pretty strong; sky overcast; weather cool. Start up a fish hawk from near the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island . . .

  The river is a little higher on account of rain. I see much sweet flag six or eight inches long, floating, it having been cut up apparently by musquash . . .

  I think that I should not hesitate to go to Europe if H.T. consents. Bishop McC. [McCloskey] who I spoke to concerning the pilgrimage tho’t that it might be very useful to me and seemed inclined in favor of it. He said tho it would be surely necessary for me to have some money on which I could depend that in some circumstances I could not get along without it. My brothers tell me that it is impossible for them to spare anything out from the bussiness. This would not hinder me from going. We should go as far as we could go. Across the Sea we certainly could get. We do not value this life or ours at a dear rate. We trust that H.T. will go.

  I am glad to hear your voice from that populous city and the more so for the tenor of its discourse. I have but just returned from a pedestrian excursion [Thoreau’s walking tour with Ellery Channing to the Berkshires and the Catskills], some what similar to that you propose, parvis componere magna, to the Catskill mountains, over the principal mountains of this state, subsisting mainly on bread and berries, and slumbering on the mountain tops. As usually happens, I now feel a slight sense of dissipation. Still I am strongly tempted by your proposal and experience a decided schism between my outward and inward tendencies. Your method of travelling especially—to live along the road—citizens of the world, without haste or petty plans—I have often proposed this to my dreams, and still do—But the fact is, I cannot so decidedly postpone exploring the Farther Indies, which are to be reached you know by other routs and other methods of travel. I mean that I constantly return from every external enterprise with disgust to fresh faith in a kind of Brahminical Artesian, Inner Temple, life. All my experience, as yours probably, proves only this reality.

  Channing wonders how I can resist your invitation, I, a single man—unfettered—and so do I. Why—there are Roncesvalles, the cape de Finisterre, and the three kings of Cologne; Rome, Athens, & the rest—to be visited in serene untemporal hours—and all history to revive in one’s memory as he went by the way with splendors too bright for this world—I know how it is. But is not here too Roncesvalles with greater lustre? Unfortunately it may prove dull and desultory weather enough here, but better trivial days with faith than the fairest ones lighted by sunshine alone. Perchance my wanderjahre has not arrived. But you cannot wait for that. I hope you will find a companion who will enter as heartily into your schemes as I should have done.

  I remember you, as it were, with the whole Catholic church at your skirts—And the other day for a moment I think I understood your relation to that body, but the thought was gone again in a twinkling, as when a dry leaf falls from its stem over our heads, but instantly lost in the rustling mass at our feet.

  I am really sorry that the Genius will not let me go with you, but I trust that it will conduct to other adventures, and so if nothing prevents we will compare notes at last.

Yrs &c
Henry D. Thoreau.

  The toads probably ceased about the time I last spoke of them. Bullfrogs, also, I have not heard for a long time.

  I perceive the scent of the earliest ripe apples in my walk. How it surpasses all their flavors! . . .

  P.M.—To Walden, Saw Mill Brook, Flint’s Pond.

  Locust days,—sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust. In Thrush Alley a lespedeza out of bloom . . .

  I find on Heywood Peak two similar desmodiums of apparently the same date,—one that of July 31st, which I will call for the present D. Dillenii, two or three feet high, curving upward, many stems from a centre, with oval-lanccolate leaves, one to two inches long, and a long, loose, open panicle of flowers, which turn bluegreen in drying, stem somewhat downy and upper sides of leaves smooth and silky to the lips . . .