The shanties which everywhere line our railroads.

 

February 12.

Living all winter with an open door for light and no visible wood-pile, the forms of old and young permanently contracted through long shrinking from cold, and their faces pinched by want.

I have seen an old crone sitting bareheaded on the hillside, then in the middle of January, while it was raining and the ground was slowly thawing under her, knitting there.

Their undeveloped limbs and faculties, buds that cannot expand on account of the severity of the season.

There is no greater squalidness in any part of the world! 

Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before they were degraded by contact with the civilized man.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1852

The condition of the Irish. See August 23, 1851 ("I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest. Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity! It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses. A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests. Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods! It is not wise to waste compassion on them."); September 24, 1851 ("The simple honesty of the Irish pleases me."); December 31, 1851 ("I observed this afternoon the old Irishwoman at the shanty in the woods, sitting out on the hillside, bare headed, in the rain and on the icy though thawing ground, knitting. She comes out, like the ground squirrel, at the least intimation of warmer weather. She will not have to go far to be buried, so close she lives to the earth, while I walk still in a greatcoat and under an umbrella. Such Irish as these are naturalizing themselves at a rapid rate, and threaten at last to displace the Yankees, as the latter have the Indians. The process of acclimation is rapid with them."); February 8, 1852 ("Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riordan. I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish. . . . One is not cold among his brothers and sisters. What if there is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the heart! These Irish are not succeeding so ill after all."); February 17, 1852 ("I saw Patrick Riordan carrying home an armful of fagots from the woods to his shanty, on his shoulder. How much more interesting an event is that man's sup per who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, or perchance to steal, the fuel to cook it with ! His bread and meat must be sweet.") See also  Walden. (Economy pp 43 -45) "Granted that the majority are able outlast either to own or higher the modern house with all its improvements. . . . But how do the poor minority fair? . . . The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. . . . I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. . . . Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers of our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

. .. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago . There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe . If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first , and so know which formed first , you may presume that these will ripen soonest ; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root , as the oldest . Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any . Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them , like a fungus . These are as green as a leek through and through , and you'll find yourself in a pickle if you open one . Others have a dead dark green- ness , the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed , and these you may safely bet on . If the vine is quite green and lively , the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign . For fear we should not discover it before , this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness ( if not mealiness ) within . Of two otherwise similar , take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles , i . e . , which is hollowest . The old or ripe ones sing base ; the young , tenor or falsetto . Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within , but this is not to be allowed . Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated , suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose . It is very childish . One man told me that he could n't raise melons because his children would cut them all up . I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth , and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius ' . . .

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

The children have done 

bringing huckleberries to sell 

for nearly a week.

What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor?

August 10

Monday. 

P. M. —In Clintonia Swamp I see a remarkable yellow fungus about the base of some grass growing in a tuft. It is a jelly, shaped like a bodkin or a pumpkin’s stigma, two inches long, in vesting the base of the grass blades, a quarter to a half inch thick, tapering to the grass each way and covered _ with a sort of moist meal. It was strong-scented and disagreeable. 

Cat-tail commonly grows in the hollows and boggy places where peat has' been dug. 

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part!

We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. But as every man, in respect to material wealth, aims to be come independent or wealthy, so, in respect to our spirits and imagination, we should have some spare capital and superfluous vigor, have some margin and leeway in which to move. 

August 10, 2019, 8:41 PM

What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor? 

if, in respect to spirits, we are to be forever cramped and in debt? In our ordinary estate we have not, so to speak, quite enough air to breathe, and this poverty qualifies our piety; but we should have more than enough and breathe it carelessly. Poverty is the rule. 

We should first of all be full of vigor like a strong horse, and beside have the free and adventurous spirit of his driver; i. e., we should have such a reserve of elasticity and strength that we may at any time be able to put ourselves at the top of our speed and go beyond our ordinary limits, just as the invalid hires a horse. 

Have the gods sent us into this world, — to this muster, — to do chores, hold horses, and the like, and not given us any spending money? 

The poor and sick man keeps a horse, often a hostler; but the well man is a horse to himself, is horsed on himself; he feels his own oats. Look at the other’s shanks. How spindling! like the timber 'of his gig! 

First a sound and healthy life, and then spirits to live it with. 

I hear the neighbors complain sometimes about the peddlers selling their help false jewelry, as if they themselves wore true jewelry; but if their help pay as much for it as they did for theirs, then it is just as true jewelry as theirs, just as becoming to them and no more; for unfortunately it is the cost of the article and not the merits of the wearer that is considered. The money is just as well spent, and perhaps better earned. I don’t care how much false jewelry the peddlers sell, nor how many of the eggs which you steal are rotten. What, pray, is true jewelry? The hardened tear of a diseased clam, murdered in its old age. Is that fair play? If not, it is no jewel. The mistress wears this in her ear, while her help has one made of paste which you cannot tell from it. False jewelry! Do you know of any shop where true jewelry can be bought? I always look askance at a jeweller and wonder what church he can belong to. 

I heard some ladies the other day laughing about some one of their help who had helped herself to a real hoop from off a hogshead for her gown. I laughed too, but which party do you think I laughed at? Isn’t hogshead as good a word as crinoline?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1857

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

My diffuse and vaporous life now concentrated and radiant as frost in a winter morning.

February 8

Debauched and worn-out senses require the violent vibrations of an instrument to excite them, but sound and still youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the wind and rain and running water. One would think from reading the critics that music was intermittent as a spring in the desert, dependent on some Paganini or Mozart, or heard only when the Pierians or Euterpeans drive through the villages; but music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. 

I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter. 

For two nights past it has not frozen, but a thick mist has overhung the earth, and you awake to the unusual and agreeable sight of water in the streets. Several strata of snow have been washed away from the drifts, down to that black one formed when dust was blowing from plowed fields. 

Riordan's solitary cock, standing on such an icy snow-heap, feels the influence of the softened air, and the steam from patches of bare ground here and there, and has found his voice again. The warm air has thawed the music in his throat, and he crows lustily and unweariedly, his voice rising to the last. 

Yesterday morning our feline Thomas, also feeling the springlike influence, stole away along the fences and walls, which raise him above the water, and only returned this morning reeking with wet. Having got his breakfast, he already stands on his hind legs, looking wishfully through the window, and, the door being opened a little, he is at once off again in spite of the rain. 

Again and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which I did not know that I possessed, though now I should be sorry to lose it. 

The week that I go away to lecture, however much I may get for it, is unspeakably cheapened. The preceding and succeeding days are a mere sloping down and up from it. In the society of many men, or in the midst of what is called success, I find my life of no account, and my spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the barrenest pasture lying fallow than cursed with the compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous and accursed desert where Babylon once stood. 

But when I have only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep of a tree sparrow, for variety in my winter walk, my life be comes continent and sweet as the kernel of a nut. I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own accord at my approach, than receive a shipload of stars and garters from the strange kings and peoples of the earth. 

By poverty, i. e. simplicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am solidified and crystallized, as a vapor or liquid by cold. It is a singular concentration of strength and energy and flavor. 

Chastity is perpetual acquaintance with the All. 

February 8, 2020

My diffuse and vaporous life becomes as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a winter morning. 

You think that I am impoverishing myself by withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society. 

By simplicity, commonly called poverty, my life is concentrated and so becomes organized, or a κόσμος , which before was inorganic and lumpish.

The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. 

Hayden senior (sixty-eight years old) tells me that he has been at work regularly with his team almost every day this winter, in spite of snow and cold. Even that cold Friday, about a fortnight ago, he did not go to a fire from early morning till night. As the thermometer, even at 12.45 p.m., was at -9°, with a very violent wind from the northwest, this was as bad as an ordinary arctic day. He was hauling logs to a mill, and persevered in making his paths through the drifts, he alone breaking the road. However, he froze his ears that Friday. Says he never knew it so cold as the past month. 

He has a fine elm directly behind his house, divided into many limbs near the ground. It is a question which is the most valuable, this tree or the house. In hot summer days it shades the whole house. He is going to build a shed around it, inclosing the main portion of the trunk. 

P. M. — To Hubbard Bath. 

Another very warm day, I should think warmer than the last. The sun is from time to time promising to show itself through the mist, but does not. A thick steam is everywhere rising from the earth and snow, and apparently this makes the clouds which conceal the sun, the air being so much warmer than the earth. The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. 

It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again. This vapor from the earth is so thick that I can hardly see a quarter of a mile, and ever and anon it condenses to rain-drops, which are felt on my face. 

The river has risen, and the water is pretty well over the meadows. If this weather holds a day or two longer, the river will break up generally. 

I see one of those great ash-colored puffballs with a tinge of purple, open like a cup, four inches in diameter. The upper surface is (as it were bleached) quite hoary. Though it is but just brought to light from beneath the deep snow, and the last two days have been misty or rainy without sun, it is just as dry and dusty as ever, and the drops of water rest on it, at first undetected, being coated with its dust, looking like unground pearls. 

I brought it home and held it in a basin of water. To my surprise, when held under water it looked like a mass of silver or melted lead, it was so coated with air, and when I suffered it to rise, — for it had to be kept down by force, — instead of being heavy like a sponge which has soaked water, it was as light as a feather, and its surface perfectly dry, and when touched it gave out its dust the same as ever. 

It was impossible to wet. It seems to be encased in a silvery coat of air which is water-tight. The water did not penetrate into it at all, and running off as you lifted it up, it was just as dry as before, and on the least jar floating in dust above your head. 

The ground is so bare that I gathered a few Indian relics. 

And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. 

But my destiny is not narrowed, but if possible the broader for it. The heavens withdraw and arch themselves higher. 

I am sensible not only of a moral, but even a grand physical pain, such as gods may feel, about my head and breast, a certain ache and fullness. This rending of a tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no accident that we mind; it is only the awards of fate that are affecting. I know of no aeons, or periods, no life and death, but these meetings and separations. 

My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet; but it rises the higher up the hills that shut it in, and will become a deep and silent lake.

Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation — if we may conceive it so — from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word "never" acquires! 

With one with whom we have walked on high ground we cannot deal on any lower ground ever after. We have tried for so many years to put each other to this immortal use, and have failed.

Undoubtedly our good genii have mutually found the material unsuitable. We have hitherto paid each other the highest possible compliment; we have recognized each other constantly as divine, have afforded each other that opportunity to live that no other wealth or kindness can afford. And now, for some reason inappreciable by us, it has become necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid.

Perchance there is none beside who knows us for a god, and none whom we know for such. Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. There is only one in each case who sees through the disguise. That one who does not stand so near to any man as to see the divinity in him is truly alone. 

I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind. 

One while I think that some great injury has been done, with which you are implicated, again that you are no party to it. I fear that there may be incessant tragedies, that one may treat his fellow as a god but receive somewhat less regard from him. I now almost for the first time fear this. Yet I believe that in the long run there is no such inequality. 

Here we are in the backwoods of America repeating Hebrew prayers and psalms in which occur such words as amen and selah, the meaning of some of which we do not quite understand, reminding me of Moslem prayers in which, it seems, the same or similar words are used. How Mormon-like!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1857

Music in the wind and rain and running water. See February 15, 1855 ("The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.")

Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. See December 11, 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. ")

The softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter. See February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks."); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice. "); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on."); February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Change in the Air

 Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.  February 8, 1857

  

The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. See March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!") See also  January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him."); January 29. 1853 ("Melvin . . . Never saw an otter track"); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 20, 1855 (Among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday"); . February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

That cold Friday, about a fortnight ago  See January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. ");  February 7, 1857(" Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before.”)

And now another friendship is ended. See e.g. January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. ");  February 19, 1857 ("A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend." ); February 23, 1857 ('That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage . . .  If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?");  February 5, 1859 ("When we have experienced many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did")

February 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

My vaporous life

now radiant as frost in

a winter morning.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, My vaporous life

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

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