Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung?

October 22.

I am surprised to find in the field behind the top of the Cliffs a little vetch still perfectly fresh and blooming, where Wheeler had grain a year or two since, with numerous little plump pods four or five eighths of an inch long and commonly four roundish seeds to each. It must be, I think, Gray's Vicia tetrasperma, though he makes that have white flowers (apparently same as Bigelow's V. pusilla, also made to have white flowers, but Dewey calls them "bluish white"), while these are purple. Otherwise it corresponds. 

A marsh hawk sails over Fair Haven Hill. 

In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. 

No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us. 

In my blustering walk over the Mason and Hunt pastures yesterday, I saw much of the withered indigo-weed which was broken off and blowing about, and the seeds in its numerous black pods rattling like the rattlepod though not nearly so loud. 

The very surface of the earth itself has been rapidly imbrowned of late, like the acorns in their cups, in consequence of cold and frost; and the evergreens and few deciduous plants which are slow to wither, like Jersey tea, are more and more distinct. 

F. hyemalis quite common for a week past.




When a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is taking a step toward its own dissolution.

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made?

Is it the intention of lawmakers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? [etc.]

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1859

No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us. See October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression.”); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").