Chapter VIII: September, 1851 (ÆT. 34) 440 (6)

_March 23._ For a week past the elm buds have been swollen. The willow catkins have put out. The ice still remains in Walden, though it will not bear. Mather Howard saw a large meadow near his house which had risen up but was prevented from floating away by the bushes.

_March 27._ Walden is two-thirds broken up. It will probably be quite open by to-morrow night.

_March 30._ Spring is already upon us. I see the tortoises, or rather I hear them drop from the bank into the brooks at my approach. The catkins of the alders have blossomed. The pads are springing at the bottom of the water. The pewee is heard, and the lark.

* * * * *

“It is only the squalid savages and degraded boschmen of creation that have their feeble teeth and tiny stings steeped in venom, and so made formidable,”—ants, centipedes, and mosquitoes, spiders, wasps, and scorpions.—HUGH MILLER.

To attain to a true relation to one human creature is enough to make a year memorable.

The man for whom law exists—the man of forms, the conservative—is a tame man.

CARRYING OFF SIMS

A recent English writer (De Quincey),[152] endeavoring to account for the atrocities of Caligula and Nero, their monstrous and anomalous cruelties, and the general servility and corruption which they imply, observes that it is difficult to believe that “the descendants of a people so severe in their habits” as the Romans had been “could thus rapidly” have degenerated and that, “in reality, the citizens of Rome were at this time a new race, brought together from every quarter of the world, but especially from Asia.” A vast “proportion of the ancient citizens had been cut off by the sword,” and such multitudes of emancipated slaves from Asia had been invested with the rights of citizens “that, in a single generation, Rome became almost transmuted into a baser metal.” As Juvenal complained, “the Orontes ... had mingled its impure waters with those of the Tiber.” And “probably, in the time of Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman descent.” Instead of such, says another, “came Syrians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, and other enfranchised slaves.” “These in half a century had sunk so low, that Tiberius pronounced her [Rome’s][153] very senators to be _homines ad servitutem natos_, men born to be slaves.”[154]

So one would say, in the absence of particular genealogical evidence, that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the city of Boston, even those of senatorial dignity,—the Curtises, Lunts, Woodburys, and others,—were not descendants of the men of the Revolution,—the Hancocks, Adamses, Otises,—but some “Syrians, Cappadocians, and Phrygians,” merely, _homines ad servitutem natos_, men born to be slaves. But I would have done with comparing ourselves with our ancestors, for on the whole I believe that even they, if somewhat braver and less corrupt than we, were not men of so much principle and generosity as to go to war in behalf of another race in their midst. I do not believe that the North will soon come to blows with the South on this question. It would be too bright a page to be written in the history of the race at present.

* * * * *

There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts. What has he been about the last fortnight? He has probably had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake. It seems to me that no such keen satire, no such cutting insult, could be offered to that man, as the absence of all inquiry after him in this crisis. It appears to [have] been forgotten that there was such a man or such an office. Yet no doubt he has been filling the gubernatorial chair all the while. One Mr. Boutwell,—so named, perchance, because he goes about well to suit the prevailing wind.[155]

In ’75 two or three hundred of the inhabitants of Concord assembled at one of the bridges with arms in their hands to assert the right of three millions to tax themselves, to have a voice in governing themselves. About a week ago the authorities of Boston, having the sympathy of many of the inhabitants of Concord, assembled in the gray of the dawn, assisted by a still larger armed force, to send back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into a slavery as complete as the world ever knew. Of course it makes not the least difference—I wish you to consider this—who the man was,—whether he was Jesus Christ or another,—for inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these his brethren ye did it unto him. Do you think _he_ would have stayed here in liberty and let the black man go into slavery in his stead? They sent him back, I say, to live in slavery with other three millions—mark that—whom the same slave power, or slavish power, North and South, holds in that condition,—three millions who do not, like the first mentioned, assert the right to govern themselves but simply to run away and stay away from their prison.

Just a week afterward, those inhabitants of this town who especially sympathize with the authorities of Boston in this their deed caused the bells to be rung and the cannon to be fired to celebrate the courage and the love of liberty of those men who assembled at the bridge. As if _those_ three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. Why, gentlemen, even consistency, though it is much abused, is sometimes a virtue. Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she heard those bells and those cannon, thought not so much of the events of the 19th of April, 1775, as of the event of the 12th of April, 1851.

I wish my townsmen to consider that, whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever deliberately commit the least act of injustice without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it!—it will become the laughing-stock of the world.

Much as has been said about American slavery, I think that commonly we do not yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most would smile at my proposition and, if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But, gentlemen, if any of you will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse—would be any worse—than to make him into a slave,—than it was then to enact the fugitive slave law,—I shall here accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.[156]

When I read the account of the carrying back of the fugitive into slavery, which was read last Sunday evening, and read also what was not read here, that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster of _Concord_, I could not help feeling a slight degree of pride because, of all the towns in the Commonwealth, Concord was the only one distinctly named as being represented in that new tea-party, and, as she had a place in the first, so would have a place in this, the last and perhaps next most important chapter of the History of Massachusetts. But my second feeling, when I reflected how short a time that gentleman has resided in this town, was one of doubt and shame, because the _men_ of Concord in recent times have done nothing to entitle them to the honor of having their town named in such a connection.

I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one need not go out of his way to do that. This law lies not at the level of the head or the reason. Its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was bred and has its life only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, unless, with a sort of quibbling and Hindoo mercy, he avoids treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot.

It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate has been left to the legal tribunals, so-called, of the country to be decided. The people have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case. The judge may decide this way or that; it is a kind of accident at best. It is evident that he is not a competent authority in so important a case. I would not trust the life of my friend to the judges of all the Supreme Courts in the world put together, to be sacrificed or saved by precedent. I would much rather trust to the sentiment of the people, which would itself be a precedent to posterity. In their vote you would get something worth having at any rate, but in the other case only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it will.

I think that recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the administration of justice in our midst, or rather as revealing what are the true sources of justice in any community. It is to some extent fatal to the courts when the people are compelled to go behind the courts. They learn that the courts are made for fair weather and for very civil cases.[157]

[Two pages missing.]

let us entertain opinions of our own;[158] let us be a town and not a suburb, as far from Boston in this sense as we were by the old road which led through Lexington; a place where tyranny may ever be met with firmness and driven back with defeat to its ships.

Concord has several more bridges left of the same sort, which she is taxed to maintain. Can she not raise men to defend them?

* * * * *

As for measures to be adopted, among others I would advise abolitionists to make as earnest and vigorous and persevering an assault on the press, as they have already made, and with effect too, on the church. The church has decidedly improved within a year or two, aye, even within a fortnight; but the press is, almost without exception, corrupt. I believe that in this country the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not much care for, we do not read, the Bible, but we do care for and we do read the newspaper. It is a bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, which the mail and thousands of missionaries are continually dispersing. It is the only book which America has printed, and is capable of exerting an almost inconceivable influence for good or for bad. The editor is [a] preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent traveller, as well as my own convictions, when I say that probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as are the editors of the periodical press in _this_ country. Almost without exception the tone of the press is mercenary and servile. The _Commonwealth_, and the _Liberator_, are the only papers, as far as I know, which make themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the authorities of Boston as lately exhibited. The other journals, almost without exception,—as the _Advertiser_, the _Transcript_, the _Journal_, the _Times_, _Bee_, _Herald_, etc.,—by their manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law or the carrying back of the slave, insult the common sense of the country. And they do this for the most part, because they think so to secure the approbation of their patrons, and also, one would think, because they are not aware that a sounder sentiment prevails to any extent.

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The _free_ men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once.[159]

* * * * *

Mahomet made his celestial journey in so short a time that “on his return he was able to prevent the complete overturn of a vase of water, which the angel Gabriel had struck with his wing on his departure.”

When he took refuge in a cave near Mecca, being on his flight (Hegira) to Medina, “by the time that the Koreishites [who were close behind][160] reached the mouth of the cavern, an acacia tree had sprung up before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest, and laid its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web.”

He said of himself, “I am no king, but the son of a Koreishite woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun.”

He exacted “a tithe of the productions of the earth, where it was fertilized by brooks and rain; and a twentieth part where its fertility was the result of irrigation.”

_April 22._ Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. Observed the crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. The wind last Wednesday, April 16th, blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I feel, that I obey.

_April 26._ The judge whose words seal the fate of a man for the longest time and furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict of the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a true opinion or _sentence_ concerning him. He it is that _sentences_ him.[161] More fatal, as affecting his good or ill fame, is the utterance of the least inexpugnable truth concerning him, by the humblest individual, than the sentence of the supremest court in the land.

* * * * *

Gathered the mayflower and cowslips yesterday, and saw the houstonia, violets, etc. Saw a dandelion in blossom.

* * * * *

Are they Americans, are they New-Englanders, are they inhabitants of Concord,—Buttricks and Davises and Hosmers by name,—who read and support the Boston _Herald_, _Advertiser_, _Traveller_, _Journal_, _Transcript_, etc., etc., _Times_? Is that the _Flag of our Union_?

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility? Is there any dust which such conduct does not lick and make fouler still with its slime? Has not the Boston _Herald_ acted its part well, served its master faithfully? How could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities in the place of that head he has? than make his head his _lower_ extremity? And when I say the Boston _Herald_ I mean the Boston press, with such few and slight exceptions as need not be made. When I have taken up this paper or the Boston _Times_, with my cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column; I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public sewers, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants’ Exchange.[162]

I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to the whipping-post and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannon to celebrate their liberty. It reminded me of the Roman Saturnalia, on which even the slaves were allowed to take some liberty. So some of you took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of your freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, your liberty died away also, and when the powder was all expended, your liberty went off with the smoke. Nowadays men wear a fool’s-cap and call it a liberty-cap. The joke could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire their jailors to do the firing and ringing for them.[163]

_April 29._ Every man, perhaps, is inclined to think his own situation singular in relation to friendship. Our thoughts would imply that other men _have_ friends, though we have not. But I do not know of two whom I can speak of as standing in this relation to one another. Each one makes a standing offer to mankind, “On such and such terms I will give myself to you;” but it is only by a miracle that his terms are ever accepted.

We have to defend ourselves even against those who are nearest to friendship with us.

What a difference it is!—to perform the pilgrimage of life in the society of a mate, and not to have an acquaintance among all the tribes of men!

What signifies the census—this periodical numbering of men—to one who has no friend?

I distinguish between my _actual_ and my _real_ communication with individuals. I _really_ communicate with my friends and congratulate myself and them on our relation and rejoice in their presence and society oftenest when they are personally absent. I remember that not long ago, as I laid my head on my pillow for the night, I was visited by an inexpressible joy that I was permitted to know and be related to such mortals as I was then actually related to; and yet no special event that I could think of had occurred to remind me of any with whom I was connected, and by the next noon, perchance, those essences that had caused me joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a remarkable gladness in the thought that they existed. Their existence was then blessed to me. Yet such has never been my actual waking relation to any.

Every one experiences that, while his relation to another actually may be one of distrust and disappointment, he may still have relations to him ideally and so really, in spite of both. He is faintly conscious of a confidence and satisfaction somewhere, and all further intercourse is based on this experience of success.

The very dogs and cats incline to affection in their relation to man. It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the house but the bond of affection? In a degree we grow to love one another.

_April 30._ What is a chamber to which the sun does not rise in the morning? What is a chamber to which the sun does not set at evening? Such are often the chambers of the mind, for the most part.

Even the cat which lies on a rug all day commences to prowl about the fields at night, resumes her ancient forest habits. The most tenderly bred grimalkin steals forth at night,—watches some bird on its perch for an hour in the furrow, like a gun at rest. She catches no cold; it is her nature. Caressed by children and cherished with a saucer of milk. Even she can erect her back and expand her tail and spit at her enemies like the wild cat of the woods. Sweet Sylvia!

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love?

To one we love we are related as to nature in the spring. Our dreams are mutually intelligible. We take the census, and find that there is one.

Love is a mutual confidence whose foundations no one knows. The one I love surpasses all the laws of nature in sureness. Love is capable of any wisdom.

“He that hath love and judgment too
Sees more than any other doe.”

By our very mutual attraction, and our attraction to all other spheres, kept properly asunder. Two planets which are mutually attracted, being at the same time attracted by the sun, preserve equipoise and harmony.

Does not the history of chivalry and knight-errantry suggest or point to another relation to woman than leads to marriage, yet an elevating and all-absorbing one, perchance transcending marriage? As yet men know not one another, nor does man know woman.

I am sure that the design of my maker when he has brought me nearest to woman was not the propagation, but rather the maturation, of the species. Man is capable of a love of woman quite transcending marriage.

I observe that the _New York Herald_ advertises situations wanted by “respectable young women” by the column, but never by respectable young men, rather “intelligent” and “smart” ones; from which I infer that the public opinion of New York does not require young men to be respectable in the same sense in which it requires young women to be so.

May it consist with the health of some bodies to be impure?

IV

MAY, 1851

(ÆT. 33)

_May 1._ Observed the _Nuphar advena_, yellow water-lily, in blossom; also the _Laurus Benzoin_, or fever-bush, spice-wood, near William Wheeler’s in Lincoln, resembling the witch-hazel. It is remarkable that this aromatic shrub, though it grows by the roadside and does not hide itself, may be, as it were, effectually concealed, though it blossoms every spring. It may be observed only once in many years.

The blossom-buds of the peach have expanded just enough to give a slight peach tint to the orchards.

In regard to purity, I do not know whether I am much worse or better than my acquaintances. If I confine my thought to myself, I appear, whether by constitution or by education, irrevocably impure, as if I should be shunned by my fellow-men if they knew me better, as if I were of two inconsistent natures; but again, when I observe how the mass of men speak of woman and of chastity,—with how little love and reverence,—I feel that so far I am unaccountably better than they. I think that none of my acquaintances has a greater love and admiration for chastity than I have. Perhaps it is necessary that one should actually stand low himself in order to reverence what is high in others.

All distant landscapes seen from hilltops are veritable pictures, which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels to them. “’T is distance lends enchantment to the view.” It is the bare landscape without this depth of atmosphere to glass it. The distant river-reach seen in the north from the Lincoln Hill, high in the horizon, like the ocean stream flowing round Homer’s shield, the rippling waves reflecting the light, is unlike the same seen near at hand. Heaven intervenes between me and the object. By what license do I call it Concord River. It redeems the character of rivers to see them thus. They were worthy then of a place on Homer’s shield.

As I looked to-day from Mt. Tabor in Lincoln to the Waltham hill, I saw the same deceptive slope, the near hill melting into the further inseparably, indistinguishably; it was one gradual slope from the base of the near hill to the summit of the further one, a succession of copse-woods, but I knew that there intervened a valley two or three miles wide, studded with houses and orchards and drained by a considerable stream. When the shadow of a cloud passed over the nearer hill, I could distinguish its shaded summit against the side of the other.

* * * * *

I had in my mind’s eye a silent gray tarn which I had seen the summer before high up on the side of a mountain, Bald Mountain, where the half-dead spruce trees stood far in the water draped with wreathy mist as with usnea moss, made of dews, where the mountain spirit bathed; whose bottom was high above the surface of other lakes. Spruces whose dead limbs were more in harmony with the mists which draped them.

The forenoon that I moved to my house, a poor old lame fellow who had formerly frozen his feet hobbled off the road, came and stood before my door with one hand on each door-post, looking into the house, and asked for a drink of water. I knew that rum or something like it was the only drink he loved, but I gave him a dish of warm pond water, which was all I had, nevertheless, which to my astonishment he drank, being used to drinking.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

THE SPIRIT OF LODIN

“I look down from my height on nations,
And they become ashes before me;
Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;
Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.”[164]

Man is as singular as God.

* * * * *

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once, I am accustomed to answer such, “Yes, I can live on board nails.” If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. That cuts the matter short with them. For my own part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to see if he could live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his tooth for his only mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women may be alarmed, who own their thirds in mills.[165]

* * * * *

Khaled would have his weary soldiers vigilant still; apprehending a midnight sally from the enemy, “Let no man sleep,” said he. “We shall have rest enough after death.” Would such an exhortation be understood by Yankee soldiers?

* * * * *

Omar answered the dying Abu Beker: “O successor to the apostle of God! spare me from this burden. I have no need of the Caliphat.” “But the Caliphat has need of you!” replied the dying Abu Beker.

* * * * *

“Heraclius had heard of the mean attire of the Caliph Omar, and asked why, having gained so much wealth by his conquests, he did not go richly clad like other princes? They replied, that he cared not for this world, but for the world to come, and sought favor in the eyes of God alone. ‘In what kind of a palace does he reside?’ asked the emperor. ‘In a house built of mud.’ ‘Who are his attendants?’ ‘Beggars and the poor.’ ‘What tapestry does he sit upon?’ ‘Justice and equity.’ ‘What is his throne?’ ‘Abstinence and true knowledge.’ ‘What is his treasure?’ ‘Trust in God.’ ‘And who are his guard?’ ‘The bravest of the Unitarians.’”

It was the custom of Ziyad, once governor of Bassora, “wherever he held sway, to order the inhabitants to leave their doors open at night, with merely a hurdle at the entrance to exclude cattle, engaging to replace any thing that should be stolen: and so effective was his police, that no robberies were committed.”

Abdallah was “so fixed and immovable in prayer, that a pigeon once perched upon his head mistaking him for a statue.”

_May 6. Monday._ The Harivansa describes a “substance called _Poroucha_, a spiritual substance known also under the name of Mahat, spirit united to the five elements, soul of being, now enclosing itself in a body like ours, now returning to the eternal body; it is mysterious wisdom, the perpetual sacrifice made by the virtue of the _Yoga_, the fire which animates animals, shines in the sun, and is mingled with all bodies. Its nature is to be born and to die, to pass from repose to movement. The spirit led astray by the senses, in the midst of the creation of Brahma, engages itself in works and knows birth, as well as death. The organs of the senses are its paths, and its work manifests itself in this creation of Brahma. Thought tormented by desires, is like the sea agitated by the wind. Brahma has said: the heart filled with strange affections is to be here below purified by wisdom. Here below even, clothed already as it were in a luminous form, let the spirit, though clogged by the bonds of the body, prepare for itself an abode sure and permanent.

“He who would obtain final emancipation must abstain from every exterior action. The operation which conducts the pious and penitent Brahman to the knowledge of the truth, is all interior, intellectual, mental. They are not ordinary practices which can bring light into the soul.

“The Mouni who desires his final emancipation will have care evening and morning to subdue his senses, to fix his mind on the divine essence, and to transport himself by the force of his soul to the eternal abode of Vichnou. Although he may have engaged in works, he does not wear the clog of them, because his soul is not attached to them. A being returns to life in consequence of the affection which he has borne for terrestrial things: he finds himself emancipated, when he has felt only indifference for them.

“The Richis mingle with nature, which remains strange to their senses. Luminous and brilliant they cover themselves with a humid vapor, under which they seem no more to exist, although existing always, like the thread which is lost and confounded in the woof.

“Free in this world, as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chain.

“Thus the Yogin, absorbed in contemplation, contributes for his part to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts, as animating original matter.”

Like some other preachers, I have added my texts—derived from the Chinese and Hindoo scriptures—long after my discourse was written.

* * * * *

A commentary on the Sankhya Karika says, “By external knowledge worldly distinction is acquired; by internal knowledge, liberation.”

* * * * *

The Sankhya Karika says, “By attainment of perfect knowledge, virtue and the rest become causeless; yet soul remains awhile invested with body, as the potter’s wheel continues whirling from the effect of the impulse previously given to it.”

* * * * *

I rejoice that horses and steers have to [be] _broken_ before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization, and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, is no reason why the others should have their natures broken, that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that [they] might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man can serve that use which the author of this illustration did. Confucius says, “The skins of the tiger and the leopard when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious. It is evident, then, that tanning their skins for shoes and the like is not the best use to which they can be put.[166]

* * * * *

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health! The discipline of the schools or of business can never impart such serenity to the mind. The philosopher contemplates human affairs as calmly and from as great a remoteness as he does natural phenomena. The ethical philosopher needs the discipline of the natural philosopher. He approaches the study of mankind with great advantages who is accustomed to the study of nature.

The Brahman Saradwata, says the Dharma Sacontala, was at first confounded on entering the city, “but now,” says he, “I look on it as the freeman on the captive, as a man just bathed in pure water on a man smeared with oil and dust.”

_May 10._ Heard the snipe over the meadows this evening.

_May 12._ Heard the golden robin and the bobolink.

But where she has her seat,—whether in Westford or in Boxboro,—not even the assessors know. Inquire perchance of that dusky family on the cross-road, which is said to have Indian blood in their veins. Or perchance where this old cellar-hole now grassed over is faintly visible, Nature once had her dwelling. Ask the crazy old woman who brings huckleberries to the village, but who lives nobody knows where.

* * * * *

If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a false conscience. It is safer to employ the dentist than the priest to repair the deficiencies of nature.

By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how far asunder a man could be separated from his senses. You are told that it will make you unconscious, but no one can imagine what it is to be unconscious—how far removed from the state of consciousness and all that we call “this world”—until he has experienced it. The value of the experiment is that it does give you experience of an interval as between one life and another,—a greater space than you ever travelled. You are a sane mind without organs,—groping for organs,—which if it did not soon recover its old senses would get new ones. You expand like a seed in the ground. You exist in your roots, like a tree in the winter. If you have an inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the furthest star.

It is not necessary for them to take ether, who in their sane and waking hours are ever translated by a thought; nor for them to see with their hindheads, who sometimes see from their foreheads; nor listen to the spiritual knockings, who attend to the intimations of reason and conscience.

_May 16._ Heard the whip-poor-will this evening. A splendid full moon to-night. Walked from 6.30 to 10 P. M. Lay on a rock near a meadow, which had absorbed and retained much heat, so that I could warm my back on it, it being a cold night. I found that the side of the sand-hill was cold on the surface, but warm two or three inches beneath.[167]

If there is a more splendid moonlight than usual, only the belated traveller observes it. When I am outside, on the outskirts of the town, enjoying the still majesty of the moon, I am wont to think that all men are aware of this miracle, that they too are silently worshipping this manifestation of divinity elsewhere. But when I go into the house I am undeceived; they are absorbed in checkers or chess or novel, though they may have been advertised of the brightness through the shutters.

In the moonlight night what intervals are created! The rising moon is related to the near pine tree which rises above the forest, and we get a juster notion of distance. The moon is only somewhat further off and on one side. There may be only three objects,—myself, a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant.

Talk of demonstrating the rotation of the earth on its axis,—see the moon rise, or the sun!

The moonlight reveals the beauty of trees. By day it is so light and in this climate so _cold_ commonly, that we do not perceive their shade. We do not know when we are beneath them.

* * * * *

According to Michaux, the canoe birch (_Betula papyracea_) ceases below the forty-third degree of latitude. Sections of the wood from just below the first ramification are used to inlay mahogany, in these parts. It is brought from Maine for fuel.

Common white birch (_B. populifolia_) not found south of Virginia. Its epidermis incapable of being divided like the canoe birch and the European white.

The common alder (_Alnus serrulata_) blooms in January.

The locust (_Robinia Pseudacacia_) was one of the earliest trees introduced into Europe from America (by one Robin, about 1601); now extensively propagated in England, France, and Germany. Used for trunnels to the exclusion of all others in the Middle and Southern States. Instead of decaying, acquire hardness with time.

_May 18. Sunday._ Lady’s-slipper almost fully blossomed. The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground. I observed that all parts of the epidermis exposed to the air and light were white, but the inner surfaces, freshly exposed, were a buff or salmon-color. Sinclair says that in winter it is white throughout. But this was cut before the sap flowed??! Was there any sap in the log? I counted about fifty rings. The shrub oaks are now blossoming. The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers. The hickory buds are almost leaves. The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. The deciduous trees are springing, to countenance the pines, which are evergreen. It seems to take but one summer day to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between winter and summer is reached. The birds are in full blast. There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory and sassafras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general.

I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar,—the _Populus tremuloides_, or American aspen, and the _P. grandidentata_, or large American aspen, whose young leaves are downy.

* * * * *

Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap into perfect wood from the third year; which is not done by the oak, the chestnut, the beech, and the elm till after the tenth or the fifteenth year.

He quotes the saying, “The foot of the owner is the best manure for his land.” “He” is Augustus L. Hillhouse, who writes the account of the olive at the request of Michaux.

The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (_P. balsamifera_) very abundant on Lake St. John and the Saguenay River, where it is eighty feet high and three feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct from the _P. candicans_, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M. finds hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does not know where it came from.

He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs being compressed about the trunk, it does not interfere with the walls of a house nor obstruct the windows.

No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and elastic and strong, second only to hickory for handspikes; used also for chair-bottoms and riddles.

The French call the nettle-tree _bois inconnu_.

Our white elm (_Ulmus Americana_) “the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.”

The _Pinus mitis_, yellow pine, or spruce pine, or short-leaved pine. A two-leaved pine widely diffused, but not found northward beyond certain districts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New Jersey fifty or sixty feet high and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Sometimes three leaves on fresh shoots; smallest of pine cones; seeds cast first year. Very excellent wood for houses, masts, decks, yards, beams, and cabins, next in durability to the long-leaved pine. Called at Liverpool New York pine. Its regular branches make it to be called spruce pine sometimes.

_Pinus australis_, or long-leaved pine, an invaluable tree, called yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine where it grows; in the North, Southern pine and red pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First appears at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eighteen inches; leaves a foot long, three in a sheath; negroes use them for brooms. Being stronger, more compact and durable, because the resin is equally distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of a bright polish, it is preferred to every other pine. In naval architecture, most esteemed of all pines,—keels, beams, side-planks, trunnels, etc. For decks preferred to yellow pine,—and flooring houses. Sold for more at Liverpool than any other pine. Moreover it supplies nearly all the resinous matter used and exported. Others which contain much pitch are more dispersed. At present (1819) this business is confined to North Carolina.

M. says the branches of resinous trees consist almost wholly of _wood_, of which the organization is even more perfect than in the body of the tree. They use dead wood for the tar, etc., in which it has accumulated.

Says the vicinity of Brunswick, Me., and Burlington, Vt., are the most northerly limits of the pitch pine or _P. rigida_. (I saw what I should have called a pitch pine at Montmorency.)

White pine (_P. Strobus_) most abundant between forty-third and forty-seventh degrees, one hundred and eighty feet by seven and eight twelfths the largest. “The loftiest and most valuable” of the productions of the New Hampshire forest.

The black spruce is called _épinette noire_ and _épinette à la bière_ in Canada. From its strength best substitute for oak and larch. Used here for rafters and preferred to hemlock; tougher than white pine, but more liable to crack.

The white spruce (_Abies alba_) called _épinette blanche_ in Canada. Not so large as the last and wood inferior.

Hemlock spruce (_Abies Canadensis_) called _pérusse_ in Canada. In Maine, Vermont, and upper New Hampshire, three fourths of the evergreen woods, the rest being black spruce. Belongs to cold regions; begins to appear about Hudson’s Bay. Its fibre makes the circuit of stocks fifteen or twenty inches in diameter in ascending five or six feet. Old trees have their circles separated, and the boards are _shaky_. Decays rapidly when exposed to the air. It is firmer, though coarser, than the white pine; affords tighter hold to nails. Used in Maine for threshing-floors, resisting indentation. Most common use sheathing of houses, to be covered with clapboards. Used for laths.

White cedar (_Cupressus thyoides_). “The perfect wood resists the succession of dryness and moisture longer than that of any other species;” hence for shingles.

Larch (_Larix Americana_); in Canada _épinette rouge_; _tamarack_ by the Dutch. Male aments appear before the leaves. Wood superior to any pine or spruce in strength and durability. Used in Maine for knees.

Cedar of Lebanon (_Larix cedrus_) largest and most majestic of resinous trees of the Old World and one of the finest vegetable productions of the globe.

Cedar Island in Lake Champlain northern limit of red cedar (_Juniperus Virginiana_). Eastward, not beyond Wiscasset. Seeds mature at beginning of fall and _sown at once_; shoot next spring. Gin made from them.

Arbor-vitæ (_Thuya occidentalis_), the only species of _Thuya_ in the New World. Lake St. John in Canada its northern limit; abounds between 48° 50´ and 45°. The posts last thirty-five or forty years, and the rails sixty, or three or four times as long as those of any other species. In northern New England States the best for fences; last longer in clay than sand.

The superiority of mahogany in the fineness of its grain and its hardness, which make it susceptible of a brilliant polish. Native trees in Northern States used in cabinet making are black, yellow, and canoe birches, red-flowering curled maple, bird’s-eye maple, wild cherry, and sumach.

The circle[s] of peck and other measures made at Hingham of black, red, or gray oak are “always of a dull blue color, produced by the gallic acid of the wood acting upon the iron vessel in which it is boiled.”

White ash used for sieve rims, rake heads and handles, scythe handles, pulleys, etc. Rake teeth of the mockernut hickory.

In New York and Philadelphia “the price [of wood for fuel][168] nearly equals and sometimes exceeds that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than 300,000 cords, and is surrounded to the distance of 300 miles by cultivated plains.” Said in book of 1819.

_May 19._ Found the _Arum triphyllum_ and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash also in bloom there, and the sassafras quite striking. Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.

* * * * *

Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “swamp beech” in Vermont.

_May 20. Tuesday._ There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The botanist Gray says:—

“The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of _Vegetation_, which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of _Fructification_ or _Reproduction_, which are concerned with the propagation of the species.”

So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my _Growth_, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my _Fruit_, do my _Work_, _propagate_ my kind, not only physically but _morally_, not only in body but in mind.

“The organs of vegetation are the _Root_, _Stem_, and _Leaves_. The _Stem_ is the axis and original basis of the plant.”

“The first point of the stem preëxists in the embryo (_i. e._ in the rudimentary plantlet contained within the seed): it is here called the radicle.” Such is the rudiment of mind, already partially developed, more than a bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light, and slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed, unfolded [_sic_].

Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radicle-like thoughts of some students, which who knows what they might expand to, if they should ever come to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive a thousand years. Other thoughts further developed, but yet pale and languid, like shoots grown in a cellar.

“The plant ... develops from the first in two opposite directions, _viz._ upwards [to expand in the light and air] to produce and continue the stem (or _ascending axis_), and downwards [avoiding the light][169] to form the root (or _descending_ axis). The former is ordinarily or in great part aërial, the latter subterranean.”

So the mind develops from the first in two opposite directions: upwards to expand in the light and air; and downwards avoiding the light to form the root. One half is aërial, the other subterranean. The mind is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak, which has not as much root as branch, whose roots like those of the white pine are slight and near the surface. One half of the mind’s development must still be root,—in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or bud, a new rootlet in the earth. The growing man penetrates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things. The infant is comparatively near the surface, just covered from the light; but the man sends down a tap-root to the centre of things.

The mere logician, the mere reasoner, who weaves his arguments as a tree its branches in the sky,—nothing equally developed in the roots,—is overthrown by the first wind.

As with the roots of the plant, so with the roots of the mind, the branches and branchlets of the root “are mere repetitions for the purpose of multiplying the absorbing points, which are chiefly the growing or newly formed extremities, sometimes termed _spongelets_. It bears no other organs.”

So this organ of the mind’s development, the _Root_, bears no organs but spongelets or absorbing points.

Annuals, which perish root and all the first season, especially have slender and thread-like fibrous roots. But biennials are particularly characterized by distended, fleshy roots containing starch, a stock for future growth, to be consumed during their second or flowering season,—as carrots, radishes, turnips. Perennials frequently have many thickened roots clustered together, tuberous or palmate roots, fasciculated or clustered as in the dahlia, pæony, etc.

Roots may spring from any part of the stem under favorable circumstances; “that is to say in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”

That is, the most clear and ethereal ideas (Antæus-like) readily ally themselves to the earth, to the primal womb of things. They put forth roots as soon as branches; they are eager to be _soiled_. No thought soars so high that it sunders these apron-strings of its mother. The thought that comes to light, that pierces the empyrean on the other side, is wombed and rooted in darkness, a moist and fertile darkness,—its roots in Hades like the tree of life. No idea is so soaring but it will readily put forth roots. Wherever there is an air-and-light-seeking bud about to expand, it may become in the earth a darkness-seeking root. Even swallows and birds-of-paradise _can_ walk on the ground. To quote the sentence from Gray entire: “Roots not only spring from the root-end of the primary stem in germination, but also from any subsequent part of the stem under favorable circumstances, that is to say, in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”

No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the earth. The mind flashes not so far on one side but its rootlets, its spongelets, find their way instantly on the other side into a moist darkness, uterine,—a low bottom in the heavens, even miasma-exhaling to such immigrants as are not acclimated. A cloud is uplifted to sustain its roots. Imbosomed in clouds as in a chariot, the mind drives through the boundless fields of space. Even there is the dwelling of Indra.

I might here quote the following, with the last—of roots: “They may even strike in the open air and light, as is seen in the copious aërial rootlets by which the Ivy, the Poison Ivy, and the Trumpet Creeper climb and adhere to the trunks of trees or other bodies; and also in Epiphytes or Air-plants, of most warm regions, which have no connection whatever with the soil, but germinate and grow high in air on the trunks or branches of trees, etc.; as well as in some terrestrial plants, such as the Banian and Mangrove, that send off aërial roots from their trunks or branches, which finally reach the ground.”

So, if our light-and-air-seeking tendencies extend too widely for our original root or stem, we must send downward new roots to ally us to the earth.

Also there are parasitic plants which have their roots in the branches or roots of other trees, as the mistletoe, the beech-drops, etc. There are minds which so have their roots in other minds as in the womb of nature,—if, indeed, most are not such?!

_May 21. Wednesday._ Yesterday I made out the black and the white ashes. A double male white ash in Miles’s Swamp, and two black ashes with sessile leaflets. A female white ash near railroad, in Stow’s land. The white ashes by Mr. Pritchard’s have no blossoms, at least as yet.

If I am right, the _black_ ash is improperly so called, from the color of its bark being lighter than the white. Though it answers to the description in other respects, even to the elder-like odor of the leaves, I should like still to see a description of the yellow ash which grows in made [_sic_].

The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras in abundance but no female.