Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone. See November 17, 1853 ("The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor.")
Turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. See May 10, 1853 ("If I am overflowing with life, rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry...")
The great art of life.
Get your living by loving,
by surplus of soul.
Thoreau's Flute, Telescope, and a Copy of Wilson's Ornithology
Alfred Winslow Hosmer 1851 - 1903, Photographer
(Concord Free Public Library)
See April 10, 1854 ("I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet"); April 23, 1854 ("I think I have got the worth of my glass now that it has revealed to me the white-headed eagle"). note Alvan Clark of Cambridge Clark began to sell telescopes around 1850, and eventually became the
premier telescope builder in the United States. Thoreau visited
him in March 1854 and took along his newly-purchased spyglass.
Clark pronounced the instrument to be of good quality. In his
journal entry for March 13 Thoreau roughly described
what is known as the "star test," still used to evaluate telescopes
today.~
Thoreau Society Bulletin
Bring the edge of the diaphragm against middle of the light , and your nail on object glass in line with these shows what is cut off . Sometimes may enlarge the hole in diaphragm . But , if you do so , you may have to enlarge the hole in diaphragm near small end , which must be exactly as large as the pencil of light there . As the diameter of the pencil is to the diameter of the available portion of the object glass , so is the power , so many times it magnifies . A good glass because the form of the blurred object is the same on each side of the focus , i . e . , shoved in or drawn out .
March 14, 1854 (""Counted over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow , in the grass and on the snow . ")
March 16, 1854 ("I see ducks afar , sailing on the meadow , leav- ing a long furrow in the water behind them . Watch them at leisure without scaring them , with my glass ; observe their free and undisturbed motions . ")
March 21, 1854 (" River skimmed over at Willow Bay last night . Thought I should find ducks cornered up by the ice ; they get behind this hill for shelter . Saw what looked like clods of plowed meadow rising above the ice . Looked with glass and found it to be more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads in [ sic ] their backs , motionless , and thin ice formed about them . ")
March 22, 1854 ("Saw a small black duck with glass , — a dipper ( ? )")
April 2, 1854 ("Saw black ducks in water and on land . Can see their light throats a great way with my glass . They do not dive , but dip . ")
April 3, 1854 ("April 3. Saw from window with glass seven ducks on meadow - water , only one or two conspicuously white , these , black heads , white throats and breasts and along sides , the rest of the ducks , brownish , probably young males and females . Probably the golden - eye . ")
April 8, 1854 ("Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler's cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven , which I at first thought a gull , but with my glass found it was a hawk and had a perfectly white head and tail and broad or blackish wings . It sailed and circled along over the low cliff , and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass , and I saw it well , both above and beneath , as it turned , and then it passed off to hover over the Cliffs at a greater height . It was undoubtedly a white- headed eagle . It was to the eye but a large hawk . ")
April 10. 1854 (" I bought me a spy - glass some weeks since . I buy but few things , and those not till long after I begin to want them , so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet . ")
April 23 1854 ("Saw my white - headed eagle again , first at the same place , the outlet of Fair Haven Pond . It was a fine sight , he is mainly — i . e . his wings and body black against the sky , and they contrast so strongly with his white head and tail . He was first flying low over the water ; then rose gradually and circled west- ward toward White Pond . Lying on the ground with my glass , I could watch him very easily , and by turns he gave me all possible views of himself . When I ob- served him edgewise I noticed that the tips of his wings curved upward slightly more , like a stereotyped the un- dulation . He rose very high at last , till I almost lost him in the clouds , circling or rather looping along west- е ward , high over river and wood and farm , effectually concealed in the sky . We who live this plodding life here below never know how many eagles fly over us . . . I think I have got the worth of my glass now that it has revealed to me the white - headed eagle . Now I see him edgewise like a black ripple in the air , his white head still as ever turned to earth , and now he turns his under side to me , and I behold the full breadth of his broad black wings , some- what ragged at the edges . ")
Journal, March 13, 1855:
I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water. See March 11, 1859 (“But methinks the sound of the woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a spring morning.); March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.”); March 18, 1853 ("The tapping of the woodpecker about this time.”); March 30, 1854 ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place."); April 14, 1856 ("Hear the flicker’s . . . tapping sounds afar over the water . It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water.")
Journal, March 13, 1857:
This month has been windy and cold, a succession of snows one or two inches deep, soon going off, the spring birds all driven off. It is in strong contrast with the last month. See February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); March 5, 1857 ("This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter.") See also March 15, 1853 ("I have not taken a more blustering walk this past winter than this afternoon."); March 28, 1854 ("Coldest day for a month or more, — severe as almost any in the winter."); March 28, 1855 ("I run about these cold and blustering days, on the whole perhaps the worst to bear in the year, . . . As for the singing of birds, — the few that have come to us, — it is too cold for them to sing and for me to hear. "); March 12, 1856 (" If the present cold should continue uninterrupted a thousand years would not the pond become solid?"); March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere.")
Journal, March 13, 1859:
The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. See March 2, 1859 ("Go and measure to what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' the year it is by Nature's clock"); March 10, 1853 (“Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins"); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”) March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)
Garfield to-day said that mink brought three dollars and a quarter, See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”)
The Hunt house, to draw from memory. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house. . . .The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine."); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form."); March 11, 1859 ("To Hunt house. I go to get one more sight of the old house which Hosmer is pulling down, but I am too late to see much of it.")
Journal, March 13, 1860:
Quite overcast all day. See March 20, 1860 ("The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50° 55° , 56° , 56°, and 51° (average 53 1/2°), - quite a spell of warm weather."); March 21, 1860 ("Colder and overcast. . . . probably not far from 40°") See also January 25, 1860 ("It may be warm or cold. Above 40° is warm for winter. . . .I will call the weather fair, if it does not threaten rain or snow or hail; foul, if it rains or snows or hails, or is so overcast that we expect one or the other from hour to hour.") March 13.
I hear the rapid
tapping of the woodpecker
over the water.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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