Very cool day.
Had for dinner a pudding made of service-berries.
It was very much like a rather dry cherry
pudding without the stones.
A slight hail-storm in the afternoon. [see after the rain]
Euphorbia maculata.
Our warmest night thus far this
year was June 21st.
It began to be cooler the 24th.
5.30
P. M. – To Cliffs.
Carrot by railroad.
Mine apparently the Erigeron
strigosus, yet sometimes tinged with purple.
The tephrosia is an agreeable
mixture of white, straw color, and rose pink; unpretending.
What is the result of that one
leaf (or more), much and irregularly, or variously, divided and cut, with milk
in it, in woods, either a lactuca or prenanthes, probably, one foot or more
high?
Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest and wild.
He goes thither at first as a
hunter and fisher, until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that
which attracted him and leaves the gun and fishing-rod behind.
The mass of men are still and
always young in this respect.
I have been surprised to observe
that the only obvious employment which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden
Pond for a whole half-day, unless it was in the way of business, any of my
“fellow-citizens,” whether fathers or children of the town, with just one
exception, was fishing.
They might go there a thousand
times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and
leave their purpose pure, — before they began to angle for the pond itself.
Thus, even in civilized society,
the embryo man (speaking intellectually) passes through the hunter stage of
development.
They did not think they were
lucky or well paid for their time unless they got a long string of fish, though
they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while.
They measured their success by
the length of a string of fish.
The Governor faintly remembers
the pond, for he went a-fishing there when he was a boy, but now he is too
old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so he knows it no longer.
If the Legislature regards it, it
is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used in fishing there, but
they know nothing about the hook of hooks.
H.
D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1853
They might go there a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, — before they began to angle for the pond itself. See December 2, 1856 ("There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.") ; October 4, 1858 ("There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")
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