Suddenly quite cold.

December 3. 

Suddenly quite cold, and freezes in the house. 

Rode with a man this forenoon who said that if he did not clean his teeth when he got up, it made him sick all the rest of the day, but he had found by late experience that when he had not cleaned his teeth for several days they cleaned themselves. I assured him that such was the general rule, — that when from any cause we were prevented from doing what we had commonly thought indispensable for us to do, things cleaned or took care of themselves. 

X  was betrayed by his eyes, which had a glaring film over them and no serene depth into which you could look. Inquired particularly the way to Emerson's and the distance, and when I told him, said he knew it as well as if he saw it. Wished to turn and proceed to his house. Told me one or two things which he asked me not to tell S. Said, "I know I am insane," — and I knew it too. Also called it "nervous excitement." 

At length, when I made a certain remark, he said, "I don't know but you are Emerson; are you? You look somewhat like him." He said as much two or three times, and added once, "But then Emerson wouldn't lie." Finally put his questions to me, of Fate, etc., etc., as if I were Emerson. 

Getting to the woods, I remarked upon them, and he mentioned my name, but never to the end suspected who his companion was. Then "proceeded to business," — " since the time was short," — and put to me the questions he was going to put to Emerson.

His insanity exhibited itself chiefly by his incessant excited talk, scarcely allowing me to interrupt him, but once or twice apologizing for his behavior. What he said was for the most part connected and sensible enough.

When I hear of John Brown and his wife weeping at length, it is as if the rocks sweated.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1859

To Ledum Swamp.

November 15

A very pleasant Indian-summer day.

P. M. -- To Ledum Swamp.

I look up the river from the railroad bridge.

It is perfectly smooth between the uniformly tawny meadows, and I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light.

I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight.

The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now, as I look up the Cyanean Reach from Clamshell.

A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.

As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off.

I turn down Witherell Glade, only that I may bring its tufts of andropogon between me and the sun for a moment. They are pretty as ever. [Vide Oct. 16th and Nov. 8th.]

In the midst of Ledum Swamp I came upon a white cat under the spruces and the water brush, which evidently had not seen me till I was within ten feet. There she stood, quite still, as if hoping to be concealed, only turning her head slowly away from and toward me, looking at me thus two or three times with an extremely worried expression in her eyes, but not moving any other part of her body. It occurred to me from her peculiar anxious expression and this motion, as if spellbound, that perhaps she was deaf; but when I moved toward her she found the use of her limbs and dashed off, bounding over the andromeda by successive leaps like a rabbit, no longer making her way through or beneath it.

I noticed on the 3d, in Worcester, that the white pines had been as full of seed there as here this year.

Also gathered half a pocketful of shagbarks, of which many still hung on the trees though most had fallen.

All through the excitement occasioned by Brown's remarkable attempt and subsequent behavior, the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defense of her citizens who are likely to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, is absorbed in a liquor-agency question.

That has, in fact, been the all-absorbing question with it !! I am sure that no person up to the occasion, or who perceived the significance of the former event, could at present attend to this question at all. As for the Legislature, bad spirits occupied their thoughts.

If any person, in a lecture or a conversation, should now cite any ancient example of heroism, such as Cato, or Tell, or Winkelried, passing over the recent deeds and words of John Brown, I am sure that it would be felt by any intelligent audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, in Roman, or English, or any, history. 

It is a fact proving how universal and widely related any transcendent greatness is, like the apex of a pyramid to all beneath it, that when I now look over my extracts of the noblest poetry the best is oftenest applicable in part or wholly to this man's position. Almost any noble verse may be read either as his elegy or eulogy or be made the text of an oration on him. Indeed, such are now first discerned to be the parts of a divinely established liturgy, applicable to those rare cases for which the ritual of no church has provided, the case of heroes, martyrs, and saints. This is the formula established on high, their burial service, to which every great genius has contributed its line or syllable. Of course the ritual of no church which is wedded to the state can contain a service applicable to the case of a state criminal unjustly condemned,--a martyr.

The sense of grand poetry read by the light of this event is brought out distinctly like an invisible writing held to the fire.

About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another.

Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon as observed by him there since ( says he saw the birds picking out the seeds), though he did not know what birds they were. William Rice says that these birds get so much of the lettuce seed that you can hardly save any. They get sunflower seeds also. Are called “lettuce-birds” in the books.

A lady who was suitably indignant at the outrage on Senator Sumner, lamenting to me to-day the very common insensibility to such things, said that one woman to whom she described the deed and on whom she thought that she had made some impression, lately inquired of her with feeble curiosity: “How is that young man who had his head hurt? I haven't heard anything about him for a good while." 

As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, — for they had no more form at that distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1859

Indian-summer day. . . look up the river . . .perfectly smooth between . . .and I see several musquash-cabins . . .in the November light. . .hear in several places a faint cricket note . . .The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now, as . . .gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble. See November 15, 1853 ("Cricket still.. . .We have to-day less wind and much haze. It is Indian-summer-like. The river has risen . . . covered most muskrat-cabins again . . .the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water . . .a gossamer day")

I saw cows . .. the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, See July 16, 1851 ("The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red!")

Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung?

October 22.

I am surprised to find in the field behind the top of the Cliffs a little vetch still perfectly fresh and blooming, where Wheeler had grain a year or two since, with numerous little plump pods four or five eighths of an inch long and commonly four roundish seeds to each. It must be, I think, Gray's Vicia tetrasperma, though he makes that have white flowers (apparently same as Bigelow's V. pusilla, also made to have white flowers, but Dewey calls them "bluish white"), while these are purple. Otherwise it corresponds. 

A marsh hawk sails over Fair Haven Hill. 

In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. 

No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us. 

In my blustering walk over the Mason and Hunt pastures yesterday, I saw much of the withered indigo-weed which was broken off and blowing about, and the seeds in its numerous black pods rattling like the rattlepod though not nearly so loud. 

The very surface of the earth itself has been rapidly imbrowned of late, like the acorns in their cups, in consequence of cold and frost; and the evergreens and few deciduous plants which are slow to wither, like Jersey tea, are more and more distinct. 

F. hyemalis quite common for a week past.




When a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is taking a step toward its own dissolution.

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made?

Is it the intention of lawmakers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? [etc.]

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1859

No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us. See October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression.”); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").

F. hyemalis quite common for a week past.  See note to October 22, 1855 ("Some F. hyemalis and other sparrows, are actively flitting about amid the alders and dogwood.")