Concord Bank has suspended.

October 15. 

October 15, 2017

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. 

The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists. 

There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather; but hardly yet that touch that brings down the rock maple. The streets are thickly strewn with elm and buttonwood and other leaves, feuille-morte color. 

Some elms and butternuts are quite bare. Yet the sugar maples in our streets are now in their prime and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints, while some white maples by the river are nearly bare. I see, too, that all locusts did not become crisp and fall before this without acquiring a bright color. In the churchyard they are unwithered, just turning a pale yellow. 

How many plants are either yellow or scarlet! Not only maples, but rose bushes, hazel bushes, etc., etc. Rue is a conspicuous pale yellow for a weed. 

I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what was going on above. 

The ten days — at least — before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time. 

Our staghorn sumach has just become a very rich scarlet. So, apparently, has the large one at Mrs. Simmonds's. They are later than the others; a yellower scarlet, almost orange. 

It is another example of the oddity of the Orientals that yellow “is in the east a regal color, more especially so in China, where it is exclusively royal.” (Field on Colors, 139.) Further west it was purple, regal and imperial. 

The river lower this morning than before this year.

Concord Bank has suspended.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1857

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. See October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather.")

A great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. See October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. “): October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”)

I sat and slept with an open window. See October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night.”); October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”)

The river lower this morning than before this year. See October 15, 1856 (“River lower than for some months. ”)

Concord Bank has suspended. See October 14, 1857 ("Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow."); See also Panic of 1857 - Wikipedia