The thaw which began on the 4th lasted through the 8th.
When I surveyed Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields, about January 10th, I was the more pleased with the task because of the three willow-rows about them. One, trimmed a year before, had grown about seven feet, a dense hedge of bright-yellow osiers. But MacManus, who was helping me, said that he thought the land would be worth two hundred dollars more if the willows were out of the way, they so filled the ground with their roots. He had found that you could not plow within five rods of them, unless at right angles with the rows.
Hayden, senior, tells me that when he lived with Abel Moore, Moore's son Henry one day set out a row of willow boughs for a hedge, but the father, who had just been eradicating an old willow-row at great labor and expense, asked Hayden who had done that and finally offered him a dollar if he would destroy them, which he agreed to do. So each morning, as he went to and from his work, he used to pull some of them up a little way, and if there were many roots formed he rubbed them off on a rock. And when, at the breakfast-table, Henry expressed wonder that his willows did not grow any better, being set in a rich soil, the father would look at Hayden and laugh.
Burton, the traveller, quotes an Arab saying, "Voyaging is a victory," which he refers to the feeling of independence on overcoming the difficulties and dangers of the desert. But I think that commonly voyaging is a defeat, a rout, to which the traveller is compelled by want of valor. The traveller's peculiar valor is commonly a bill of exchange. He is at home anywhere but where he was born and bred. Petitioning some Sir Joseph Banks or other representative of a Geographical Society to avail himself of his restlessness, and, if not receiving a favorable answer, necessarily going off some where next morning. It is a prevalent disease, which attacks Americans especially, both men and women, the opposite to nostalgia. Yet it does not differ much from nostalgia. I read the story of one voyageress round the world, who, it seemed to me, having started, had no other object but to get home again, only she took the longest way round. Snatching at a fact or two in be half of science as he goes, just as a panther in his leap will take off a man's sleeve and land twenty feet beyond him when travelling down-hill, being fitted out by some Sir Joseph Banks.
It seems that in Arabia, as well as in New England, they have the art of springing a prayer upon you. The Madani or inhabitants of El Medinah are, according to Burton, notwithstanding an assumed austerity and ceremoniousness, not easily matched in volubility and personal abuse.
"When a man is opposed to more than his match in disputing or bargaining, ... he interrupts the adversary with a 'Sail' ala Mohammed,' — bless the Prophet. Every good Moslem is obliged to obey such requisition by responding, 'Allahumma salli alayh,' — O Allah bless him! But the Madani curtails the phrase to 'A'n,' supposing it to be an equivalent, and proceeds in his loquacity. Then perhaps the baffled opponent will shout out 'Wahhid,' i. e. 'Attest the unity of the Deity;' when, instead of employing the usual religious phrases to assert that dogma, he will briefly ejaculate, 'Al,' and hurry on with the course of conversation." (Page 283.)
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1857
When I surveyed Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields, about January 10th. See January 16, 1857 ("When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day")
February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 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 © 2009-2022
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