I PS 3042 fv13 > r Book . M a Gopglit N? COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. A THOREAU CALENDAR A THOREAU CALENDAR EDITED BY ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS p^^ Copyright, igog By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Published, September, 1909 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. Ci. A 24 4;; 6 4 AUi tt 1909 PREFATORY NOTE THERE are few writings in English literature which surpass the pages of Thoreau for unique- ness and variety of theme and sententious phrasing. As he had a strong, distinctive personality, so his literary expressions were original and forceful. His books contain many nuggets of study and experience on Nature, economics, books, ethics, religion, and a score of other topics. Sometimes the tone is that of blunt practicality ; in other passages, the spiritual or poetic note prevails. It has always been difficult to classify Thoreau's writings because of their variety of subject and lack of coherent plan ; he said frankly, " It is wise to write on many themes, that so you may find the right and inspiring one." Thoreau is associated in memory with the Transcendentalist movement of his time and community, and three of the lead- ing exponents of this philosophy, in America, were his friends and neighbors, — Emerson, Alcott, and Ellery Channing. While Thoreau was philosophic by nature, he did not invent nor accept any definite theory or program of living for mankind [ V ] in general. He was as pronounced in non- conformity as Emerson, and almost as mystical in certain moods as Alcott, and he preached the " gospel of the simple life " with as much vigorous radicalism as any of its advocates have done. He studied his own body, mind, and soul, and de- termined to live so that he might meet his individ- ual needs. He urged no one to follow this special method of living, but rather he appealed to every reader to find out his own needs and conditions and utilize them for self-improvement. His con- ception of a noble character included the qualities of sincerity, purity, justice, contentment, industry tempered by leisure for spiritual refreshment, and a constant, loving study of Nature. To a marked degree he realized these traits in his mature years. Although he was sometimes prejudiced and unin- formed on certain phases of life, although he seemed to many acquaintances only an egoist of unusual type, yet he practiced his own text, " Be resolutely and faithfully what you are ; be humbly what you aspire to be." In selecting these quotations the editor has chosen from the books published during Thoreau's life or prepared for publication largely in accord with his suggestions to family and friends. The aim has been to represent the significant aspects of his life and teachings. Many longer passages, which might reveal more fully his personality, 2 ? [ vi ] JANUARY JANUARY FIRST IF a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated ? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advan- tage in them ? that it was a vain endeavor ? Letters to Various Persons. JANUARY SECOND Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant, is too happy to make a noise, except by a ic^ tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills ? The Maine Woods. JANUARY THIRD I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow else- where. Nature is as well adapted to our [ I ] weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incur- able form of disease. IValden. JANUARY FOURTH Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes ; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird ; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri ; and owe an accession of health to these reminis- cences of luxuriant Nature. Natural History of Massachusetts. JANUARY FIFTH So is each one's world but a clearing in the forest, so much open and inclosed ground. A Walk to IVachusett. JANUARY SIXTH What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented ? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. IValden. JANUARY SEVENTH Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men. It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero ; it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man. A IVeek on the Concord Ri'uer. JANUARY EIGHTH Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. " Tell the tailors," said he, " to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten. IValden. JANUARY NINTH Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer. A IVinler Walk. [ 3] JANUARY TENTH There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circu- late, and the ebb always balances the flow. All streams are but tributary to the ocean, which itself does not stream, and the shores are un- changed but in longer periods than man can measure. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JANUARY ELEVENTH When Winter fringes every bough With his fantastic wreath. And puts the seal of silence now Upon the leaves beneath ; When every stream in its pent-house Goes gurgling on its way. And in his gallery the mouse Nibbleth the meadow hay ; Methinks the summer still is nigh. And lurketh underneath. As that same meadow-mouse doth lie Snug in that last year's heath. A Winter Walk. JANUARY TWELFTH It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember. Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. [4] JANUARY THIRTEENTH I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enter- prise before you, try it in your old clothes. IValden. JANUARY FOURTEENTH But cowardice is unscientific ; for there cannot be a science of ignorance. There may be a science of bravery, for that advances ; but a retreat is rarely well conducted ; if it is, then is it an orderly advance in the face of circumstances. Massachusetts Natural History. JANUARY FIFTEENTH Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of a hun- dred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Con- federacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. W aid en. [5] JANUARY SIXTEENTH At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse- rake or a kitchen range which is not cracked. Let not the poet shed tears only for the public weal. He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure, beside what runs into the troughs, and not like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the en- deavor to heal its wounds. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JANUARY SEVENTEENTH Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises ? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drum- mer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not im- portant that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer ? Walden. JANUARY EIGHTEENTH The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose can- not be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds. Cape Cod. [6] JANUARY NINETEENTH If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there. A Week on the Concord Rinjer. JANUARY TWENTIETH To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to ex- clude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come. Walking. JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ? We are determined to be starved be- fore we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work., we have n't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. Walden. JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND What avails it though a light be placed on the top of a hill, if you spend all your life directly [ 7 ] under the hill ? It might as well be under a bushel. Cape Cod. JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut and dried, — very dry\ I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks, — which they set up between you and them in the shortest intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown off. They do not walk without their bed. tf^alden. JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH Why should not we meet, not always as dys- peptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as ^wpeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-glorious morning ? Anti-Slanjery and Reform Papers. JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH Now chiefly is my natal hour. And only now my prime of life. I will not doubt the love untold. Which not my worth nor want hath bought. Which wooed me young and wooes me old. And to this eveninc); hath me brouiiht. A Week on the Concord River, [8] JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 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, indi- vidual excellence is to be reo-arded. o Walking. JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. IValden. JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface. A Week on the Concord Ri^ver, JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. WaUen. [9] JANUARY THIRTIETH No face welcomed us but the fine fantastic sprays of free and happy evergreen trees, waving one above another in their ancient home. The Maine Woods. JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST Art is as long as ever, but life is more inter- rupted and less available for a man's proper pursuits. It is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. Anti- Slavery and Reform Papers. [ 10 ] FEBRUARY FEBRUARY FIRST THERE can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was ^olian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Walden. FEBRUARY SECOND Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men of their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the " glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this. Cape Cod. FEBRUARY THIRD Methinks that must be where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks on some distant and un- explored stream, and waiting for an unheard-of [■■ ] freshet to fetch it down. O make haste, ye gods, with your winds and rains, and start the jam before it rots ! The Maine Woods. FEBRUARY FOURTH Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, some warm and springy swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with peren- nial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring. Walden. FEBRUARY FIFTH How could the patient pine have known The morning breeze would come, Or humble flowers anticipate The insect's noonday hum, — Till the new light with morning cheer From far streamed through the aisles, And nimbly told the forest trees For many stretching miles ? A Week on the Concord Rp-ver. FEBRUARY SIXTH God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the per- .' petual instilling and drenching of the reality that [ '^J surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions ; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. WalJen. FEBRUARY SEVENTH In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives awav all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it ; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. A Winter Walk. FEBRUARY EIGHTH This world is but canvass to our imaginations. I see men with infinite pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I, with at least equal pains, would realize to my imagination, — its capacities ; for certainly there is a life of the mind above the wants of the body and inde- pendent of it. A Week on the Concord River. FEBRUARY NINTH When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any per- manent and absolute existence, — that petty fears [ 13 ] and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. Walden. FEBRUARY TENTH There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it. A IVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. FEBRUARY ELEVENTH Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. fValden. FEBRUARY TWELFTH It is true actually as it is true really ; it is true materially as it is true spiritually, that they who seek honestly and sincerely, with all their hearts and lives and strength, to earn their bread, do earn it, and it is sure to be very sweet to them. Letters to Various Perrons. FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, [ H J nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost ; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. IFalden, FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Walking. FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. Walden. FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH Behold the difference between the oriental and the occidental. The former has nothing to do in this v/orld ; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun till his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course. A Week on the Concord Ri-ver. [ 15 ] FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises from swamps and pools, is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle. A Winter Walk. FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH If a man has faith he will co-operate with equal faith everywhere ; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, what- ever company he is joined to. To co-operate, in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. Walden. FEBRUARY NINETEENTH But after all, man is the great poet, and not Homer or Shakspeare •, and our language itself, and the common arts of life are his work. A Week on the Concord River. FEBRUARY TWENTIETH But there is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals, the only sliders are back-sliders. Anti-Sla-uery and Reform Papers. [ i6 ] FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST When we would rest our bodies we cease to support them; wc recline on the lap of earth. So when we would rest our spirits, we must recline on the Great Spirit. Letters to Various Persons. FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND In the winter, the botanist needs not confine himself to his books and herbarium, and give over his out-door pursuits, but may study a new department of vegetable physiology, what may be called crystalline botany, then. Massachusetts Natural History. FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD Music is the sound of the universal laws pro- mulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass any man's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn. A Week on the Concord Rvuer. FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH How far men go for the material of their houses ! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine-boards [ 17 ] for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities, iron arrow- points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with. IVaUen. FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the out- ward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness ! Walking. FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but ^tw of the qualities of the modern pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the American backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into the woods with their axes. They were a family and church, and were more anxious to keep to- gether, though it were on the sand, than to explore and colonize a New World. Cape Cod. FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is torpid ; the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. A Week on the Concord Ki-ver. [ '8 ] FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in ; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. Anti-Sla'-very and Reform Papers. FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH In the winter, I stop short in the path to admire how the trees grow up without forethought, regardless of the time and circumstances. They do not wait as man does, but now is the golden age of the sapling. Earth, air, sun, and rain, are occasion enough ; they were no better in primeval centuries. The " winter of their dis- content " never comes. Massachusetts Natural History. [ 19 ] MARCH MARCH FIRST ANY of the phenomena of Winter are sug- gestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant ; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. IVaUen. MARCH SECOND Happy the man who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial laws in just proportion ; whose every faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its level ; who neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable to Nature and to God. Letters to Various Persons. MARCH THIRD If we could listen but for an instant to the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should under^;tand why he Vv'ill not exchange his sava«;eness for civillza- tion. A IFick en the Concord River. [ 21 J MARCH FOURTH But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manceuvred ; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen. The after- noon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure. The Maine IVoods. MARCH FIFTH It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. Walden. MARCH SIXTH The mariner who makes the safest port in Heaven, perchance, seems to his friends on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Boston Harbor the better place ; though perhaps invisible to them, a skillful pilot comes to meet him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow ofF that coast, his good ship makes the land in halcyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture there, while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. Cape Cod. [ 22 ] MARCH SEVENTH A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and serious labor to give an impetus to his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a sword. A Week o?i the Concord Rinjer. MARCH EIGHTH We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Un- fortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. IValden. MARCH NINTH I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, — and it is commonly more than that, — - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly en- gagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. Walking. [ 23] MARCH TENTH The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. A fVeek on the Concord Ki^er. MARCH ELEVENTH Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves aeainst her heats and colds, but find her oui- constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds. A Winter Walk. MARCH TWELFTH The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. Walden. [ 24] MARCH THIRTEENTH A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful, — while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, — he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all ? IFalking. MARCH FOURTEENTH A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. A JVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. MARCH FIFTEENTH Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, — a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. Walden. [ ^5 ] MARCH SIXTEENTH What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creaic of crickets ? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Massachusetts Natural History. MARCH SEVENTEENTH Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as Solomon in all his glory, so similar are the lives of men in all countries, and fraught . with the same homely experiences. One half the world knows how the other half lives. A IVeek on the Concord Ri'ver. MARCH EIGHTEENTH To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. fVaUen. MARCH NINETEENTH What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day, when the meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood ? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, [ ^6 ] as in summer ; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we are treading; some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place. • A Winter Walk. MARCH TWENTIETH It is but thin soil where we stand ; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself. — I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. MARCH TWENTY-FIRST Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. WaUen. MARCH TWENTY-SECOND Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. Anti-Sla'-very and Reform Papers. [ 27 ] MARCH TWENTY-THIRD But if we would appreciate the flow that is in these books, we must expect to feel it rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away our critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to higher levels above and behind ourselves. A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives. Xhe gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. Autumnal Tints. MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. IValden. MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH May we not see God ? Are we to be put ofF and amused in this life, as it were with a mere alle- [ 28 ] gory ? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely ? A li^eek on the Concord Ri'ver. MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH In society you will not find health, but in Nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of Nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Massachusetts Natural History. MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity. A Week on the Concord River. MARCH TWENY-NINTH Perhaps the time will come when every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room, and talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects will put it into their plans. A Yankee in Canada, MARCH THIRTIETH We do not live by justice but by grace. As the sort of justice which concerns us in our daily intercourse is not that administered by the judge [ ^-9 ] so the historical justice which we prize is not arrived at by nicely balancing the evidence. Anti-Sla'very and Reform Papers. MARCH THIRTY-FIRST Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than I received it. Walden. [ 30] APRIL APRIL FIRST IN the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail im- mediately, they had better aim at something high. Walden. APRIL SECOND The little rill tinkled the louder, and peopled all the wilderness for me ; and the glassy smooth- ness of the sleeping lake, laving the shores of a new world, with the dark, fantastic rocks rising here and there from its surface, made a scene not easily described. It has left such an im- pression of stern, yet gentle, wildness on my memory as will not soon be effaced. The Maine Woods. APRIL THIRD The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Walden. [ 31 ] APRIL FOURTH The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. A Week on the Concord River. APRIL FIFTH All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land, and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they be- longed to another planet, from sea-weed to a sailor's yarn, or a fish-story. In this element the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely mingled. Cape Cod. APRIL SIXTH Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Walden. [ 32 ] APRIL SEVENTH The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. Walking. APRIL EIGHTH How many mornings, summer and winter, be- fore yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine ! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. Walden. APRIL NINTH A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma.^ though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land. A Week on the Concord River. APRIL TENTH So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. Letters to Various Persons. [ 33 ] APRIL ELEVENTH But Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten, in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do. A Week on the Concord Rv~uer. APRIL TWELFTH The first sparrow of spring ! The year begin- ning with younger hope than ever ! The faint silvery wafblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song- sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell ! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations ? IValden. APRIL THIRTEENTH Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which per- chance shatters the temple of knowledge itself, — and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day. Walking, [ 34] APRIL FOURTEENTH There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive depth of silence, never to be revealed. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. APRIL FIFTEENTH It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them. IValden. APRIL SIXTEENTH The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out to me, on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest. Cape Cud. [ 35 ] APRIL SEVENTEENTH One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. Walden. APRIL EIGHTEENTH Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour, For now I 've business with this drop of dew. And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, — I '11 'meet him shortly when the sky is blue. A Week on the Concord River. APRIL NINETEENTH I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off. The Maine Woods. APRIL TWENTIETH We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. A Week on the Concord River. APRIL TWENTY-FIRST As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endca\'or- ing to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, L 36 ] be its benefactor and Impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me, the human insect. Walden. APRIL TWENTY-SECOND The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given it should be as severely true as the decision of the three judges below, and not the partial testimony of friends. A Week on the Concord Ri^er. APRIL TWENTY-THIRD Methinks I see the thousand shrines erected to Hospitality shining afar in all countries, as well Mahometan and Jewish, as Christian, khans, and caravansaries, and inns, whither all pilgrims without distinction resort. The Landlord. APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH Between whom there is hearty truth there is love ; and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. [ 37 ] APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye ; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. IValden. APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH Humor is not so distinct a quality as, for the purposes of criticism, it is commonly regarded, but allied to every other, even the divine faculty. The familiar and cheerful conversation about every hearthside, if it be analyzed, will be found to be sweetened by this principle. Anti-Sla'uery and Reform Papers. APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant. It is suicide and corrupts good manners to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. A Week on the Concord Ri-ver, [ 38 ] APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age. IValden. APRIL TWENTY-NINTH Only their names and residence make one love '" fishes. I would know even the number of their fin-rays, and how many scales compose the lateral line. I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better qualified for all for- tunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the brook. Methinks I have need even of his sympathy, and to be his fellow in a degree. Massachusetts Natural History. APRIL THIRTIETH Shadows, referred to the source of light, are pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of the substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider than themselves. A IVeek on the Concord Ria/er. [ 39 ] MAY MAY FIRST N the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread of life. We must act with so rapid and resistless a purpose in one direction that our vices will necessarily trail behind. Letters to Various Persons, MAY SECOND I 've heard within my inmost soul Such cheerful morning news, In the horizon of my mind Have seen such orient hues, As in the twilight of the dawn, When the first birds awake, Are heard within some silent wood. Where they the small twigs break. A IFeek on the Concord River. MAY THIRD Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten [ 41 ] toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity ! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. WaUen. MAY FOURTH There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold. mid Apples. MAY FIFTH The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters annually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. A Week on the Concord River. MAY SIXTH Under the one word, house, are included the school-house, the alms-house, the jail, the tavern, the dwelling-house ; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains the elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house. Excursions. [ 42 ] MAY SEVENTH No doubt another may also think for me ; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. Walden. MAY EIGHTH A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. MAY NINTH It is generally supposed that they who have long been conversant with the Ocean can fore- tell by certain indications, such as its roar and the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from calm to storm ; but probably no such ancient mariner as we dream of exists ; they know no more, at least, than the older sailors do about this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. Cape Cod. MAY TENTH Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What [ 43 ] if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners ? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. IValden. MAY ELEVENTH Nature has taken more care than the fondest . parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me ; my most delicate experience is typified there. Excursions. MAY TWELFTH Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning ? Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things, to the scholar is rarely well remembered; steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and senti- mentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing. A JVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. [ 44 ] MAY THIRTEENTH It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape ! On the whole, we are glad of the storm, which would show us the ocean in its angriest mood. Cape Cod. MAY FOURTEENTH When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. IValden. MAY FIFTEENTH In May and June the woodland quire is in full tune, and given the immense spaces of hollow air, and this curious human ear, one does not see how the void could be better filled. Each summer sound Is a summer round. Excursiuns. [ 45 ] MAY SIXTEENTH The very timber and boards and shingles of which our houses are made, grew but yesterday in a wilderness where the Indian still hunts and the moose runs wild. New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its head-waters in the Adirondac country. The Maine Woods. MAY SEVENTEENTH As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Walden. MAY EIGHTEENTH Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarely seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do. A Week on the Co)uorJ Ri-uer. [ 46 ] MAY NINETEENTH How prompt we are to satisfy the huno-er and thirst of our bodies, how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls. Letters to Various Persons. MAY TWENTIETH We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. Walden. MAY TWENTY-FIRST You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grand-children may be. A Week on the Concord Rluer. MAY TWENTY-SECOND I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, — Go to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The sprino- has come with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though 1 have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn [ 47 ] and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Use- ful Knowledge treats its cattle. IValking. MAY TWENTY-THIRD Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfold- ing its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots, — now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests; — the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. JVatden. MAY TWENTY-FOURTH 7^he world seemed decked for some holyday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit trees are in blossom. A We£k on the Concord Ri'ver. MAY TWENTY-FIFTH ^ The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is fre- quently tempted to turn and linger near some [ 4« J more than usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor fragrant ! IVild Apples. MAY TWENTY-SIXTH I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. IVaUen. MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH It may be that the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the greater trans- parency of its atmosphere, but because we naturally look most into the west, as forward into the day, and so in the forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the shadow of every tree. A Week on the Concord Ri^er. MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH C^ It is remarkable what a serious business men ' make of getting their dinners, and how univer- sally shiftlessness and a grovelling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go [ 49 ] without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore.^ our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous. Cape Cod. MAY TWENTY-NINTH In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods ? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works, — for this may sometimes happen. Walking, MAY THIRTIETH The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, — such health, such cheer, they afford forever ! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Walden. [ 50 ] MAY THIRTY-FIRST And to be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded ; but excludes him- self. You have only to push aside the curtain. Letters to Various Persons. ,~f [ 51 ] JUNE JUNE FIRST 'O run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. Letters to Various Persons. JUNE SECOND The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us ; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. IValden. JUNE THIRD Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste. A Week on the Concord River. JUNE FOURTH Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. [ 53 ] We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. IValking. V JUNE FIFTH What is it gilds the trees and clouds. And paints the heavens so gay, But yonder fast abiding light With its unchanging ray ? Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, Upon a winter's morn, Where'er his silent beams intrude The murky night is gone. A Week on the Concord River. JUNE SIXTH You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint " No Admittance " on my gate. Walden. JUNE SEVENTH Nature will bear the closest inspection ; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life. I explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the [ 54 ] V5o myriad sounds which crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which eternity is made. Excursions. JUNE EIGHTH We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane ; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JUNE NINTH No people can long continue provincial in /r, character who have the propensity for politics f (y and whittling, and rapid travelling, which the Yankees have, and who are leaving the mother country behind in the variety of their notions and inventions. The possession and exercise of practical talent merely are a sure and rapid means of intellectual culture and independence. T/ie Maine Woods. JUNE TENTH The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenog- raphers, could not report the news it brings. Cape Cod. [ 55 ] JUNE ELEVENTH A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine. There is no kind of herb that grows, but somebody or other says that it is good. I am very glad to hear it. It reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis. A Week on the Concord River. JUNE TWELFTH We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do ; and yet how much is not done by us ! or, what if we had been taken sick ? How vigilant we are ! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it ; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. IFaUen. JUNE THIRTEENTH Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct ? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impres- sive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon. A IFeek on the Concord Ri'ver. JUNE FOURTEENTH The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer [ 56 ] for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them. Excursions. JUNE FIFTEENTH To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a train- ing such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. IValden. JUNE SIXTEENTH Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JUNE SEVENTEENTH Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Words- worth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, " Here is his library, but his study is out of doors." Excursions. [ 57 ] JUNE EIGHTEENTH The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted ; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. JValden. JUNE NINETEENTH But special I remember thee, Wachusett, who like me Standest alone without society. Thy far blue eye, A remnant of the sky, Seen through the clearing or the gorge, Or from the windows on the forge, Doth leaven all it passes by. Nothing is true, But stands 'tween me and you. Thou western pioneer Who know'st not shame nor fear, By venturous spirit driven. Under the eaves of heaven. And can'st expand thee there, And breathe enough of air ? Upholding heaven, holding down earth, Thy pastime from thy birth. Not steadied by the one nor leaning on the other; May I approve myself thy worthy brother ! A Walk to Wachusett. [ 58 ] JUNE TWENTIETH Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. If^alden. JUNE TWENTY-FIRST The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect. Letters to Various Persons. JUNE TWENTY-SECOND The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams. A IVeek on the Concord Riuer. JUNE TWENTY-THIRD What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious ? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely. IValden. [ 59 ] JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH In the night" the eyes are partly closed or retire into the head. Other senses take the lead. The walker is guided as well by the sense of smell. Excursions. JUNE TWENTY- FIFTH What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals. Letters to Various Persons. JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH But it is fit that the Past should be dark ; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. A JVeek on the Concord Ri-uer. JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. IVaUen. JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my garden, in like fashion, almost any fruit you wish, every year for ages, [ 60 J until the crop more than fills the whole garden. You have but little more to do, than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days. Perfect alchemists I keep, who can transmute substances without end ; and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. The Succession of Forest Trees. JUNE TWENTY-NINTH I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the night, if I report to the gazettes any- thing transpiring about us at that season worthy of their attention, — if I can show men that there is some beauty awake while they are asleep, — if I add to the domains of poetry. Night and Moonlight. JUNE THIRTIETH No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and ability to work on high things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging. Letters to Various Persons. [ 6i ] JULY JULY FIRST ALL the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without secret violence ; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the falls. A Week on the Concord Ri^er. JULY SECOND It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. Walden. JULY THIRD Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. I have no patience towards Such conscientious cowards. Give me simple laboring folk, Who love their work. Whose virtue is a song To cheer God along. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. [ 63 ] JULY FOURTH To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which I should not before have accepted. There were distinct patches of the color of a purple grape with the bloom rubbed off. But lirst and last the sea is of all colors. Cape Cod. JULY FIFTH Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Take a July night, for instance. About ten o'clock, — when man is asleep, and day fairly forgotten, — the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On all sides novelties present themselves. Instead of the sun there are the moon and stars, in- stead of the wood-thrush there is the whip-poor- will, — instead of butterflies in the meadows, fire-flies, winged sparks of fire ! who would have believed it .'' Night and Moonlight. JULY SIXTH Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attend- ance, but sincerity and truth were not ; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. Walden. [ 64 ] JULY SEVENTH Bring a spray from the wood, or a crystal from the brook, and place it on your mantel, and your household ornaments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used to a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute and a response to all your enthusiasm and heroism. Massachusetts Natural History. JULY EIGHTH Poetry is so universally true and independent of experience, that it does not need any particular biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages to the genius of humanity, and the gods themselves. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JULY NINTH I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk "^^I'/v I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. Excursions. JULY TENTH But we had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated bv the sight of the wild fir and spruce-tops, and those [ 65 ] of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. The Maine Woods. JULY ELEVENTH The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. Walden. JULY TWELFTH Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into the sea, and we imagine that its music is distinguished by the river gods from the general lapse of the stream, and fUlls sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is nearer to the ocean. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JULY THIRTEENTH There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symboli- cal of human life, — now climbing the hills, now [ 66 ] descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience. A Walk to Wachusett. JULY FOURTEENTH There is something singularly grand and impres- sive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in a windy day. If there is any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with the dews of the night on them are heavier than by day. The Maine Woods. JULY FIFTEENTH I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. Walden. As we have said, Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God ; though, referred to herself, she is genius, and there is a similarity between her operations and man's art even in [ 67 ] the details and trifles. When the overhanging pine drops into the water, by the sun and water, and the wind rubbing it against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned in a lathe. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. JULY SIXTEENTH My " best " room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose car- pet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. WaUen. JULY SEVENTEENTH But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness. T/ie Maine ll'oods. [ 68 ] JULY EIGHTEENTH Be not simply good ; be good for something. Letters to Various Persons. JULY NINETEENTH It was a singular experience, that long acquaint- ance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and thresh- ing, and picking over, and selling them, — the last was the hardest of all, — I might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. Walden. JULY TWENTIETH When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that Nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet. A Week on the Concord River. JULY TWENTY-FIRST 1 went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Walden. [ 69 ] JULY TWENTY-SECOND Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testa- ment, — the gospel according to this moment. Excursions. JULY TWENTY-THIRD We had come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable beneficence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his hill-side, — when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls whom we know. A Week on the Concord River. JULY TWENTY-FOURTH I was struck by this universal spiring upward of the forest evergreens. The tendency is to slender, spiring tops, while they are narrower below. Not only the spruce and fir, but even the arbor-vitfe and white-pine, unlike the soft, spreading second-growth, of which I saw none, [ 70] all spire upwards, lifting a dense spear-head of cones to the light and air, at any rate, while their branches straggle after as they may ; as Indians lift the ball over the heads of the crowd in their desperate game. In this they resemble grasses, as also palms somewhat. The hemlock is com- monly a tent-like pyramid from the ground to its summit. The Maine IVoods. JULY TWENTY-FIFTH Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free labor. H^aUen. JULY TWENTY-SIXTH We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene ; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of drift- wood or a few beach-plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beach-bird. Cape Cod. JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH We are as happy as the birds when our Good Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work [ 71 ] without a sense of dissipation. Our pen-knife glitters in the sun ; our voice is echoed by yonder wood ; if an oar drops, we are fain to let it drop again. A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH Who knows but if men constructed their dwell- ings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they / \ /^ are so engaged ? But alas ! we do like cowbirds 1 U 7 and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which w' other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with their chattering and unmusical notes. Walden. JULY TWENTY-NINTH Honest traveling is about as dirty work as you can do, and a man needs a pair of overalls for it. A Yankee in Canada. JULY THIRTIETH There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject ; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first. A Week on the Concord River. [ 72 ] JULY THIRTY-FIRST It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing remarkable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The heroes and discoverers have found true more than was previously believed, only when they were expecting and dreaming of something more than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even themselves discovered, that is, when they were in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Cape Cod. [ 73 ] AUGUSl AUGUST FIRST 'J\ yTORNING brings back the heroic ages. -*-^-*- I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimag- inable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and win- dows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem ; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing adver- tisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. IValden. AUGUST SECOND The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success, — the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part, — at least, apparently, — but some- times these are cinnamon and spices, you know. Letters to Various Persons. [ IS ] AUGUST THIRD So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin ; and the voyageur will do well to re- plenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources. A Week on the Concord River. AUGUST FOURTH It is true, I came as near as is possible to come to being a hunter and miss it, myself; and as it is, I think that I could spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sus- tain myself, with satisfaction. This would be next to living like a philosopher on the fruits of the earth which you had raised, which also attracts me. The Maine Woods. AUGUST FIFTH Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life, that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fin- gers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Walden. [ 76 ] AUGUST SIXTH Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August ; but I think that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers. mid Apples. AUGUST SEVENTH The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of Nature. Our lives need the relief of such a back- ground, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. A fVeek on the Concord Rifer. AUGUST EIGHTH It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent, — others merely sensible^ as the phrase is, — others prophetic. Excursions. AUGUST NINTH For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully ; surveyor, if not of highways, [ 11 ] then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. Walden. AUGUST TENTH If with fancy unfurled You leave your abode, You may go round the world By the Old Marlborough Road. The Old Marlborough Road. AUGUST ELEVENTH There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and re- pose of Nature. All laborers must have their nooning, and at this season of the day, we are all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. A Week on the Concord River. AUGUST TWELFTH The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Walden. [ 78 ] AUGUST THIRTEENTH When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of Nature, I am reminded, by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contem- plated, of the inexpressible privacy of a life, — how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses must be considered from the holiest, quietest nook. Excursions. AUGUST FOURTEENTH In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and wholly new life, which no man has lived ; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. A IVeek on the Concord River. AUGUST FIFTEENTH The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation : now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper. Walden. [ 79 ] AUGUST SIXTEENTH Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man. We should not know but our life were fated to be always grovelling, but it is permitted to behold them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We see laws which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived ; and their lamps burn all the night, too, as well as all day, — so rich and lavish is that nature which can afford this superfluity of light. A Walk to Wachusett. AUGUST SEVENTEENTH The hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely ; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west. Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. AUGUST EIGHTEENTH In autumn, even in August, the thoughtful days begin, and we can walk anywhere with profit. Beside, an outward cold and dreariness, which make it necessary to seek shelter at night, lend a spirit of adventure to a walk. Cape Cod. [ 80 ] AUGUST NINETEENTH The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat our- selves nor one another thus tenderly. Walden. AUGUST TWENTIETH By the twentieth of August, everywhere in woods and swamps, we are reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and Brake.s, and the withering and blackened Skunk- Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by the river-side, the already blackening Pontederia. Autumnal Tints. AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST There have been heroes for whom this world seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded ; whose daily life was the stuff of which our dreams are made, and whose presence enhanced the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. A Week on the Concord Ri- THE unconsciousness of man is the con- sciousness of God. Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. DECEMBER SECOND But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are com- mitted to a farm or the county jail. IValden. DECEMBER THIRD Out on the silent pond straightway The restless ice doth crack. And pond sprites merry gambols play Amid the deafening rack. Eager I hasten to the vale. As if I heard brave news. How Nature held high festival, Which it were hard to lose. [ 117 ] Excursions. DECEMBER FOURTH What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature ! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that our life should be lived as ten- derly and daintily as one would pluck a flower. The Maine IVoods. DECEMBER FIFTH Here is no apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our incapacity, — for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our hands ? — but only a warning to bungle less. A Week on the Concord Ri-ver. DECEMBER SIXTH The bottom of the sea is strewn with anchors, some deeper and some shallower, and alternately covered and uncovered by the sand, perchance with a small length of iron cable still attached, — to which where is the other end ? So many un- concluded tales to be continued another time. Cape Cod. [ ii8 ] DECEMBER SEVENTH The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. JValden. DECEMBER EIGHTH Sometimes our fate grows too homely and famil- iarly serious ever to be cruel. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in furs. A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. DECEMBER NINTH Talk of burning your smoke after the wood has been consumed ! There is a far more impor- tant and warming heat, commonly lost, which precedes the burning of the wood. It is the smoke of industry, which is incense. Letters to Various Persons. DECEMBER TENTH No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes ; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched, clothes than to have a sound conscience. il^ Walden. [ 119 1 7 DECEMBER ELEVENTH Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as Nature; they can offer no reason or ''guess," but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. A JFeek on the Concord River. DECEMBER TWELFTH 1 must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Excursions. DECEMBER THIRTEENTH Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the earth, to find the perfect man ; but each repre- sents only some particular excellence. The Landlord. DECEMBER FOURTEENTH ^ I learned this, at least, by my experiment : that if one advances confidently in the direction or his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success un- expected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; [ 120 ] or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. Walden. DECEMBER FIFTEENTH Talk of mysteries ! — Think of our life in Nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — ^ rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth ! the actual world ! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we ? ^ ""^ rhe Maine Woods. DECEMBER SIXTEENTH Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he lives. A Week on the Concord Riuer. DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of Nature. Surely good courage will not flag here on the Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the Fur Countries. [ 121 ] 1f'^:x There is enough in that sound to cheer one under any circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock, and the pine will not countenance despair. Massachusetts Natural History. DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. tValden, DECEMBER NINETEENTH A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and per- fect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Excursions. DECEMBER TWENTIETH Who would neglect the least celestial sound, Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, If he could know it one day would be found That star in Cygnus whither we are bound. And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? A IVeek on the Concord River. [ 122 ] DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales from the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in wreathes as the housewife on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. A Winter Walk. DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND This further experience also I gained. I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, sim- plicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Walden. DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD It would really be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a moun- tain, as good at least as one well-endowed pro- fessorship. It were as well to be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades. A Week on the Concord River. [ 123 ] DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Wash- ington, or at the Highland Light, in Truro. Cape Cod. DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH Our life without love is like coke and ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their entertainments, better is the hos- pitality of Goths and Vandals. A Week on the Concord River. DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick, too ; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment ; to toe that line. iralden. DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH But through all this dreariness we seemed to have a pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody, for always the same strain which is a dirge to one household is a morning song of rejoicing to another. Cape Cod. [ 124 ] DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no per- severing, never-ending enterprises. Our expe- ditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. -^__,..-^ y^ V Excursions. DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morn- ing or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segrtient of the rainbow which 1 have clutched. IValden. DECEMBER THIRTIETH Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civil- ized ofF the face of the earth," — our forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation, — not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true recreation ? or shall we, like villains, grub them all up, poaching on our own national domains ? The Maine Woods. [ 125 ] DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn. Excursions. [ 126 ] LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 016 225 924 6 i