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| February 20. 5:59 PM |
This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep.
Minott says that the house he now lives in was framed and set up by Captain Isaac Hoar just beyond the old house by Moore's, this side the one he was born in, his mother's (?) house (whose well is that buried by Alcott on the sidewalk), and there the frame stood several years, Hoar having gone off, he thinks, to Westminster.
M. helped a man take down its chimney when he was a boy; it was very old, laid in clay. He was quite a lad and used to climb up on the frame and, with a teaspoon, take the eggs of the house wren out of the mortise-holes.
At last his grandfather, Dr. Abel Prescott, "an eminent physician," bought it and moved it to where it now stands, and died in it in 1805, aged eighty-eight (born 1717). Said he died exactly where I sat, and the bed stood so and so, north and south from the clock.
This Dr. Prescott had once probably lived with his nephew Willoughby Prescott, where Loring's is. After, when married, lived in the old rough-cast house near the poorhouse where Minott's mother was born.
It was Dr. Abel P.'s son Abel (Minott's uncle) who rode into Concord before the British. Minott's father was rich, and died early in the army, Aunt says.
Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on.
He says that Frank Buttrick (who for a great many years worked at carpentering for John Richardson, and was working for him when he died) told him that Richardson called him when he was at the point of death and told him that he need not stop working on account of his death, but he might come in to the prayer if he wished to. R. is spoken of as a strong and resolute man.
I wish that there was in every town, in some place accessible to the traveller, instead of or beside the common directories, etc., a list of the worthies of the town, i. e. of those who are worth seeing.
Miss Minott has several old pieces of furniture that belonged to her grandfather Prescott, one a desk made for him and marked 1760. She said the looking-glass was held oldest furniture, she thought. It has the name John scratched on the middle by a madcap named John Bulkley from college, who had got so far with a diamond before he was stopped.
Beverley, after describing the various kinds of fowl that frequented the shores of Virginia, "not to mention beavers, otters, musk rats, minxes," etc., etc., says, "Although the inner lands want these benefits (which, however, no pond or plash is without)," etc. I admire the offhand way of describing the superfluous fertility of the land and water.
What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side.
What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1857
This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. See February 20, 1858 ("The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen.")
I am that rock by the pond-side. See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction”); August 8, 1852 ("I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections”); August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); December 11, 1855 (" My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.”); The Maine Woods ("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?”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter. . .”); May 12, 1857 (“He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. . . .One with the rocks and with us.”)
Also Walden (Solitude) (“. . .all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. . . . However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.”)
Minott says that the house he now lives in was framed and set up by Captain Isaac Hoar just beyond the old house by Moore's, this side the one he was born in, his mother's (?) house (whose well is that buried by Alcott on the sidewalk), and there the frame stood several years, Hoar having gone off, he thinks, to Westminster.
M. helped a man take down its chimney when he was a boy; it was very old, laid in clay. He was quite a lad and used to climb up on the frame and, with a teaspoon, take the eggs of the house wren out of the mortise-holes.
At last his grandfather, Dr. Abel Prescott, "an eminent physician," bought it and moved it to where it now stands, and died in it in 1805, aged eighty-eight (born 1717). Said he died exactly where I sat, and the bed stood so and so, north and south from the clock.
This Dr. Prescott had once probably lived with his nephew Willoughby Prescott, where Loring's is. After, when married, lived in the old rough-cast house near the poorhouse where Minott's mother was born.
It was Dr. Abel P.'s son Abel (Minott's uncle) who rode into Concord before the British. Minott's father was rich, and died early in the army, Aunt says.
Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on.
He says that Frank Buttrick (who for a great many years worked at carpentering for John Richardson, and was working for him when he died) told him that Richardson called him when he was at the point of death and told him that he need not stop working on account of his death, but he might come in to the prayer if he wished to. R. is spoken of as a strong and resolute man.
I wish that there was in every town, in some place accessible to the traveller, instead of or beside the common directories, etc., a list of the worthies of the town, i. e. of those who are worth seeing.
Miss Minott has several old pieces of furniture that belonged to her grandfather Prescott, one a desk made for him and marked 1760. She said the looking-glass was held oldest furniture, she thought. It has the name John scratched on the middle by a madcap named John Bulkley from college, who had got so far with a diamond before he was stopped.
Beverley, after describing the various kinds of fowl that frequented the shores of Virginia, "not to mention beavers, otters, musk rats, minxes," etc., etc., says, "Although the inner lands want these benefits (which, however, no pond or plash is without)," etc. I admire the offhand way of describing the superfluous fertility of the land and water.
What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side.
What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1857
This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. See February 20, 1858 ("The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen.")
I am that rock by the pond-side. See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction”); August 8, 1852 ("I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections”); August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); December 11, 1855 (" My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.”); The Maine Woods ("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?”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter. . .”); May 12, 1857 (“He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. . . .One with the rocks and with us.”)
Also Walden (Solitude) (“. . .all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. . . . However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.”)
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