Yellow butterflies in the road after the rain of yesterday.

September 19.

A. M. — To Stow. 

Hear the note of the goldfinch on all sides this fine day after the storm. 

Butternuts have been falling for two or three weeks, — now mostly fallen, — but must dry and lose their outer shells before cracking them. 

They say that kittens' tails are brittle, and perhaps the tip of that one's was broken off. 

The young gentleman who travels abroad learns to pronounce, and makes acquaintance with foreign lords and ladies, — among the rest perchance with Lord Ward, the inventor and probably consumer of the celebrated Worcestershire Sauce. 

See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1859


See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. See September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”); September 4, 1856 ("Butterflies in road a day or two.”); September 11, 1852 ("I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only."); September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”); September 17, 1852 ("Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers"); October 7, 1857 ("Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there"); October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”); October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.")