As July, perchance, has its spring side, so August has its autumnal side.

 

September 1. Thursday.

P. M. - To Dugan Desert and Ministerial Swamp.

The character of the past month, as I remember, has been, at first, very thick and sultry, dogdayish, the height of summer, and throughout very rainy, followed by crops of toadstools, and latterly, after the dog days and most copious of the rains, autumnal, some what cooler, with signs of decaying or ripening foliage.

The month of green corn and melons and plums and the earliest apples, — and now peaches, — of rank weeds.

As July, perchance, has its spring side, so August has its autumnal side.

Was that the cackling of hens I heard, or the clicking of a very distant hand-organ?

Methinks the silvery cinquefoil is of late much more abundant.

Is there any cessation to it?

The green-briar berries begin to turn.

Some large maples along the river are beginning to redden.

I observe the stillness of the air and the smoothness of the water of late.

The Hieracium Canadense is, methinks, the largest and handsomest flower of its genus, large as the fall dandelion; the paniculatum the most delicate.

To-day and yesterday quite warm, or hot, again.

I am struck again and again by the richness of the meadow-beauty lingering, though it will last some time, in little dense purple patches by the sides of the meadows. It is so low it escapes the scythe. It is not so much distinct flowers (it is so low and dense), but a colored patch on the meadow.

Yet how few observe it! How, in one sense, it is wasted! How little thought the mower or the cranberry-raker bestows on it! How few girls or boys come to see it! 

That small aster which I call A. Tradescanti, with crowded racemes, somewhat rolled or cylindrical to appearance, of small white flowers a third of an inch in diameter, with yellow disks turning reddish or purplish, is very pretty by the low roadsides, resounding with the hum of honey-bees; which is commonly despised for its smallness and commonness, — with crowded systems of little suns.

The Polygonum articulatum, apparently not for some time yet.

The large epilobium still plenty in flower in Tarbell's cleared swamp.

Hazel bushes are now browned or yellowed along wall - sides in pastures; blackberry vines also are reddening.

The Solidago nemoralis has commonly a long, sharply triangular head of small crowded flowers, evenly convex and often, if not commonly, recurved through a quarter of a circle, very handsome, solid-looking, re curved golden spear-heads.

But frequently it is more erect and branched.

What is that alga-like plant covering the ground in Tarbell's Swamp where lately burnt over, with close mats a rod in diameter, with fruit now two or three inches high, star-like, and little green thallus?

I see now puffballs, now four inches through, turned dark from white, and ripe, fill the air with dust four or five feet high when I kick them.

Saw a red squirrel cutting off white pine cones.  He had strewn the ground with them, as yet untouched, under the tree.

He has a chirrup exactly like a partridge.

Have made out Aster multiflorus by roadside beyond Badger house; probably not long out.

It is distinguished by its hoariness, and its large herbaceous spreading calyx-tips and its crowded, somewhat rigid linear leaves, not tapering at base, low with a stout stem.

A solidago by Marlborough road (S. puberula? or neglecta? ), stricta-like, but panicle upright with short erectish racemes and lower leaves serrate, and five or six inches long; not long out.

Should think it stricta if not for form of head; more like puberula, though this an imperfect one, in press.? 

I think my white daisy, which is still quite fresh in some places, must be Erigeron strigosus, for the hairs are minute and appressed, though the rays are not twice as long as the calyx-scales.

I have seen no purplish ones since spring.

Aster undulatus begins to be common.

Johnswort, the large and common, is about done.

That is the common polypody whose single fronds, six or eight inches long, stand thick in moss on the shelving rock at the Island.

The river nowadays is a permanent mirror stretching without end through the meadows, and unfailingly when I look out my window across the dusty road, I see it at a distance with the herbage of its brink reflected in it.

There it lies, a mirror uncracked, unsoiled.

Plants or weeds very widely dispersed over the globe command a certain respect, like Sonchus oleraceus, Oregon, New Zealand, Peru, Patagonia, etc.; Sicyos angulatus, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaiian Islands, etc.; Polygonum aviculare, Chenopodium album, and Polygonum Persicaria, Oregon and Egypt; also many others, according to Pickering.

Pickering says that “the missionaries [at the Hawaiian Islands] regarded as one main obstacle to improvement the extremely limited views of the natives in respect to style of living; 'a little fish and a little poi, and they were content.'” 

But this is putting the cart before the horse, the real obstacle being their limited views in respect to the object of living.

A philosopher has equally limited views in their sense, but then he is not content with material comforts, nor is it, perhaps, quite necessary that he first be glutted with them in order to become wise.

"A native, I was assured, ' could be supported for less than two cents a day.' ” ( They had adopted the use of coin. ) 

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

In the case of the savage, the accompaniment of simplicity is idleness with its attend ant vices, but in the case of the philosopher, it is the highest employment and development.

The fact for the savage, and for the mass of mankind, is that it is better to plant, weave, and build than do nothing or worse; but the fact for the philosopher, or a nation loving wisdom, is that it is most important to cultivate the highest faculties and spend as little time as possible in planting, weaving, building, etc. It de pends upon the height of your standard, and no doubt through manual labor as a police men are educated up to a certain level.

The simple style is bad for the savage because he does worse than to obtain the luxuries of life; it is good for the philosopher because he does better than to work for them.

The question is whether you can hear freedom.

At present the vast majority of men, whether black or white, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their good.

If the Irishman did not shovel all day, he would get drunk and quarrel.

But the philosopher does not re quire the same discipline; if he shovelled all day, we should receive no elevating suggestions from him.

What a literary fame is that of Æsop, - an Æsopian fame! 

Pickering says : 

“A little to the west of Celebes, the literature of the Malay nation contains a translation of the Fables of Æsop; who, according to the unsatisfactory accounts we have of him, was one of the earliest of the Greek writers. And further, the fact may be noted, that the Æsopian style of composition is still in vogue at Madagascar."

A fame on its way round eastward with the Malay race to this western continent ! A fame that travels round the world from west to east.

P. gives California to the Malay race ! There are two kinds of simplicity, - one that is akin to foolishness, the other to wisdom.

The philosopher's style of living is only outwardly simple, but inwardly complex.

The savage's style is both outwardly and inwardly simple.

A simpleton can perform many mechanical labors, but is not capable of profound thought.

It was their limited view, not in respect to style, but to the object of living.

A man who has equally limited views with respect to the end of living will not be helped by the most complex and refined style of living.

It is not the tub that makes Diogenes, the Jove-born, but Diogenes the tub.




H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1853

Some large maples along the river are beginning to redden. See September 1, 1852 ("I see two or three small maples already scarlet, across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three birches diverge, at the point of a promontory next the water")

The Hieracium Canadense is, methinks, the largest and handsomest flower of its genus, large as the fall dandelion; the paniculatum the most delicate. See  August 21, 1851 (" Hieracium paniculatum, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. . . .  Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense."); October 2, 1856 ("Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hawkweeds (hieracium); GoBotany Hieracium paniculatum

That small aster which I call A. Tradescanti, See September 1, 1854 (" The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime."); See also August 31, 1853 ("Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begun to be conspicuous."); September 13, 1856 ("The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely . . . Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers."); September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.")

Saw a red squirrel cutting off white pine cones.  He had strewn the ground with them, as yet untouched, under the tree.  See September 1, 1859 (" Green white pine cones are thrown down. An unusual quantity of these have been stripped for some time past, and I see the ground about the bases of the trees strewn with them."); see also September 24, 1857 ("The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality.") and also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines