It is a great pleasure to walk in this clearer atmosphere, though cooler. How great a change, and how sudden, from that sultry and remarkably hazy atmosphere to this clear, cool autumnal one, in which all things shine, and distance is restored to us! It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still.
The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous. I see a boy already raking cranberries. The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two. Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds.
At Clamshell Bank the barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow. Some sit on the bare twigs of a dead apple tree. Are they not gathering for their migration?
I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. I love to sit on the withered grass on the sunny side of the wall. My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her.
Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail. It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience.
If so, the sound of my flail will be heard by those who have ears to hear, separating the kernel from the chaff all the fall and winter, and a sound no less cheering it will be . . . Have you commenced to thresh your grain? The lecturer must commence his threshing as early as August, that his fine flour may be ready for his winter customers.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1854
It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire . See August 29, 1859 ("It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.") . .See also September 11, 1853 "Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. . . .The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again.")
It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience. See August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind."); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?") July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail"); September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.") September 14, 1859 ("Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns."); October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things")
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