Minott says he is seventy-five years old.

September 30.

Ground white with frost this morning. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Young oaks generally reddening, etc., etc. Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown. 

At Wheeler's Wood by railroad, heard a cat owl hoot ing at 3.30 P.M., which was repeatedly answered by another some forty rods off. 

Talked with Minott, who was sitting, as usual, in his wood-shed. His hen and chickens, finding it cold these nights on the trees behind the house, had begun last night to roost in the shed, and one by one walked or hopped up a ladder within a foot of his shoulder to the loft above. He sits there so much like a fixture that they do not regard him. It has got to be so cool, then, that tender chickens seek a shelter at night; but I saw the hens at Clark's (the R. Brown house) were still going to roost in the apple trees. 

M. asks the peddlers if they’ve got anything that’ll cure the rheumatism, and often buys a wash of them. 

I was telling him how some crows two or three weeks ago came flying with a scolding caw toward me as I stood on “Cornel Rock,” and alighted within fifty feet on a dead tree above my head, unusually bold. Then away go all but one, perchance, to a tall pine in the swamp, twenty rods off; anon he follows. Again they go quite out of sight amid the tree-tops, leaving one behind. This one, at last, quite at his leisure, flaps away cawing, knowing well where to find his mates, though you might think he must winter alone. 

Minott said that as he was going over to Lincoln one day thirty or forty years ago, taking his way through Ebby Hubbard's woods, he heard a great flock of crows cawing over his head, and one alighted just within gunshot. He raised his little gun marked London, which he knew would fetch down anything that was within gunshot, and down came the crow; but he was not killed, only so filled with shot that he could not fly. 

As he was going by John Wyman’s at the pond, with the live crow in his hand, Wyman asked him what he was going to do with that crow, to which he answered, “Nothing in particular,”—he happened to alight within gunshot, and so he shot him. Wyman said that he’d like to have him. “What do you want to do with him?” asked M. “If you’ll give him to me, I’ll tell you,” said the other. To which Minott said, “You may have him and welcome.” 

Wyman then proceeded to inform him that the crows had eaten a great space in Josh Jones the blacksmith's corn-field, which Minott had passed just below the almshouse, and that Jones had told him that if he could kill a crow in his corn-field he would give him half a bushel of rye. He could guess what he wanted the crow for. So Wyman took the crow and the next time he went into town he tossed him over the wall into the corn-field and then shot him, and, carrying the dead crow to Jones, he got his half-bushel of rye. 

[Here, and at several following points, matter relative to the recent Maine excursion is omitted as having been already used in “The Maine Woods.”] 

The mist and mizzling rain there [at Mt. Kineo, Moosehead Lake.] was like the sparkling dust of amethysts. 

The Watsons tell me that Uncle Ned uses the expression “a glade” for the sheen of the moon on the water, which is, I see, according to Bailey, being from kAdôos, a branch. Helps thinks “a glade” such a path through a forest as an army would cut with a sword. . . . 

What poor crack-brains we are! easily upset and unable to take care of ourselves! If there were a precipice at our doors, some would be found jumping off to-day for fear that, if they survived, they might jump off to-morrow.

Consider what actual phenomena await us. To say nothing of life, which may be rare and difficult to detect, and death, which is startling enough, we cannot begin to conceive of anything so surprising and thrilling but that something more surprising may be actually presented to us. . . . 

According to the Upanishads, “As water, when rained down on elevated ground, runs scattered off in the valleys, so ever runs after difference a person who beholds attributes different (from the soul).” “As pure water, which is thrown down on pure ground, remains alike, so also, O Gautama, is the soul of the thinker who knows.” 

Minott says he is seventy-five years old. Minott said he had seen a couple of pigeons go over at last, as he sat in his shed. At first he thought they were doves, but he soon saw that they were pigeons, they flew so straight and fast. 

He says that that tall clock which still ticks in the corner belonged to old John Beatton, who died before he was born; thought it was two hundred years old!! Some of the rest of the furniture came from the same source. His gun marked London was one that Beatton sent to England for, for a young man that lived with him. I read on John Beatton’s tombstone near the powder-house that he died in 1776, aged seventy-four.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 30, 1857

Talked with Minott, who was sitting, as usual, in his wood-shed. . . . See July 3, 1857 ("Minott was sitting in his shed as usual, while his handsome pullets were perched on the wood within two feet of him, the rain having driven them to this shelter.”); February 20, 1857 ("Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on")


Minott said he had seen a couple of pigeons go over at last, as he sat in his shed. See September 2, 1856 (“Minott, whose mind runs on them so much, but whose age and infirmities confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago. I rarely pass at any season of the year but he asks if I have seen any pigeons. ”)