You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it.

October 10

In August, '55, I levelled for the artificial pond at Sleepy Hollow. They dug gradually for three or four years and completed the pond last year, '59.

It is now about a dozen rods long by five or six wide and two or three deep, and is supplied by copious springs in the meadow. There is a long ditch leading into it, in which no water now flows, nor has since winter at least, and a short ditch leading out of it into the brook. It is about sixty rods from the very source of the brook.

Well, in this pond thus dug in the midst of a meadow a year or two ago and supplied by springs in the meadow I find to-day several small patches of the large yellow and the kalmiana lily already established. Thus in the midst of death we are in life.

. . . The river, where these abound, is about half a mile distant down the little brook near which this pond lies, though there may be a few pads in the ditched part of it at half that distance.

How then, did the seed get here?

...

You have only to dig a pond anywhere in the fields hereabouts, and you will soon have not only water-fowl, reptiles, and fishes in it, but also the usual water-plants, as lilies, etc. You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it.

P. M. -- Went to a fire or smoke at Mrs. Hoar's.

There is a slight blaze and more smoke. Two or three hundred men rush to the house, cut large holes in the roof, throw many hogsheads of water into it, — when a few pails full well directed would suffice, and then they run off again, leaving your attic three inches deep with water, which is rapidly descending through the ceiling to the basement and spoiling all that can be spoiled, while a torrent is running down the stairways.

They were very forward to put out the [fire], but they take no pains to put out the water, which does far more damage. The first was amusement; the last would be mere work and utility.

Why is there not a little machine invented to throw the water out of a house?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1860