Harvest Days--the seventh day of glorious weather.

October 11.

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

River lower than before since winter at least; very low.

Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest.

I see some fine clear yellows from the Rhus Toxicodendron on the bank by the hemlocks and beyond.

The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. The O. regalis is the least generally withered of them.

The onoclea is much later and still generally green along the bank, or faded white here and there.

Looking at the reflection of the bank by the Hemlocks, the reflected sun dazzles me, and I approach nearer to the bank in order to shut it out (of course it disappears sooner in the reflection than the substance, because every head is raised above the level of the water), and I see in the reflection the fine, slender grasses on the sharp or well-defined edge of the bank all glowing with silvery light, a singularly silvery light to be seen in the water, and whose substance I can not see to advantage with my head thus high, since the sun is in the way.

This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days. Within the week most of the apples have been gathered; potatoes are being dug; corn is still left in the fields, though the stalks are being carried in.

Others are ditching and getting out mud and cutting up bushes along fences, – what is called “brushing up,” — burning brush, etc.

These are cricket days.

The river is so low that I run against several rocks, which I must have floated over three or four days ago, and I see many snags and water-logged trunks on the bottom or partly exposed, which were then invisible.

It is remarkable how many trees — maple and swamp white [oak], etc. — which stand on the bank of the river, being undermined by the water or broken off by the ice or other cause, fall into the stream and finally sink to the bottom and are half buried there for many years. A great deal of wood, especially of the kinds named, is thus lost. They last longer there probably than in favorable localities out of water. I see still the timber foundation of an old dam just above Spencer Brook, extending across the river on the bottom, though there has been nothing above water within my recollection. The large black oaks in front of Prescott Barrett's are one by one falling into the river, and there are none to succeed them. They were probably left to skirt the stream when the other wood was cut, and now, when they are undermined, there are none behind to supply their places.

Mr. Conant of Acton tells me that there was a grist mill built over the river there by Sam Barrett's grandfather, and that he remembers going to it when he was fourteen. He went in at the Lee house and crossed the river by a bridge at the mill. He says that it is as much as sixty years since the mill was standing. Minott thinks it is not quite so long since. He remembers the bridge there, not a town one, nor strong enough for a horse and cart. Thinks the mill was discontinued because Dr. Lee complained of its flowing his wood land. They used to stop with their carts this side and carry their bags back and forth over the bridge on their shoulders. Used a small and poor road across to Lee's farm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 11, 1857

River lower than before since winter at least. See October 15, 1856 ("River lower than for some months")

Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest.. See October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats . . ."); October 12, 1858 ("There are many maple, birch, etc., leaves on the Assabet, in stiller places along the shore, but not yet a leaf harvest"); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish.")

The seventh day of glorious weather. See October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year , so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm . . . Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this."); October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer.")

Do I perceive the shadows lengthen already?

September 8. 

Grapes ripe on the Assabet for some days.

September 8, 2017

Gentiana saponaria out. 

Carrion-flower berries ripe for some days. 

Polygala verticillata still, on left side of road beyond Lee place. I put it with the other polygalas in July. 

Do I perceive the shadows lengthen already?

September 8, 2017

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 8, 1852

Grapes ripe on the Assabet for some days. See note to September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

Gentiana saponaria out. See September 6, 1857 ("Soapwort gentian, out not long"); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now."); September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Soapwort Gentian (Gentiana saponaria)

Carrion-flower berries ripe. See September 3, 1856  ("One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster.")


Polygala verticillata still, on left side of road. . .See September 10, 1856 ("Near the site of the old Bellows Fort, saw completely purple Polygala verticillata abundant in road.")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

. . .left side of road beyond Lee place. See February 15, 1857 ("When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i. e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester.")

That sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather.

February 27

Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. 

P. M. — To the Hill. 

FEBRUARY 27, 2017

The river has skimmed over again in many places. 

I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains. They have done this in so many places that it looks as if the farmer had been at work with his maul. They must save him some trouble thus.

I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house! Yet it was quite a damp night, after rain in the afternoon, and rather still. They are all curled by the heat, so that you can tell which side was first exposed to it. The grain is more distinct than ever. Nature so abhors a straight line that she curls each cinder as she launches it on the fiery whirlwind. 

All the lightness and ethereal spirit of the wood is gone, and this black earthy residuum alone returned. The russet hillside is spotted with them. They suggest some affinity with the cawing crows. 

I see some of those large purplish chocolate-colored puffballs. They grow in dry pastures. They are in various states. I do not understand their changes.

Some are quite pulverulent, and emitting a cloud of dust at every touch. 

Others present a firm, very light ash-colored surface above, in a shallow saucer, with a narrow, wrinkled, crenate border, and beneath this firm skin is a perfectly dry spongy mass, less ashy, more reddish than the last, and fibrous, with very little dust in it but many small ribbed grubs. 

The surface often looks as if it had been pecked by birds in search of these grubs. 

Sometimes there is, above the white skin of the saucer, considerable pulverulent substance, as if in the other case this had been dissipated. 

Sometimes two large ones are joined at the root. 

Was there any portion (now dissipated) above this light-colored skin? Did the portion beneath the skin originally contain more dust, which has escaped? Or will it yet come to dust? 

Are not fungi the best hygrometers?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1857

The peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather . . . as if its coming were premature. See February 27, 1861 ("Mother hears a robin to-day."); See also February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp."); March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect . . . But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede"); March 18, 1859 ("A day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain."); April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs."); April 2, 1852 ("The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. See January 8, 1855 (" I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him.")

Are not fungi the best hygrometers? See April 22, 1856 ("It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers.")

 

That sound so often 

heard on the cutting March wind 

or through sleet or rain.

By the size of the bricks you cannot tell the age of an old house within fifty years.

February 22

 

Dugan Desert

P. M. — To Dugan Desert. 

The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside. 

Its bricks are about the same size with those of the Lee chimney; they are eight and three quarters to nine inches long by four and a half, but not in clay. 

A part at least of the back side has bricks on their edges in clay, as at the Hunt house, and there are bricks in clay flat on the plate, close under roof at the eaves. 

I think that by the size of the bricks you cannot tell the age of an old house within fifty years.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1857

The Tommy Wheeler house. See December 28, 1851 ("Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here.")

Its bricks are about the same size with those of the Lee chimney . . . See February 17, 1857 ("The bricks of the old [Lee]chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick. ")

Measuring the Hunt House.

February 17

Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. 

The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats, and even boats. Some are apprehending loss of fruit from this warm weather. It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least. 

P. M. — To the old Hunt house. 

The bricks of the old chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick. This the size also of the bricks in clay behind the boarding of the house. There is straw in the clay and also in the lime used as plastering in both these chimneys. That on the first has a singular blue color. 

This house is about forty-nine feet on the front by twenty. The middle of door about twenty-five and a half feet from east end. House from fourteen to fifteen feet high. There was a door at the west end within Abel Hunt's remembrance; you can see where. The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine. But I doubt if it is older, because the boards on the main part are feather-edged even within this part, as if they had once been on the outside. 

E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house. Says his old house where Everett lives was dated 1736.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1857

Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. See February 1, 1857 ("Thermometer at 42°."); February 7, 1857 ("Another warm day, . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m.") ; February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now."); February 14, 1857 ("Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°"); February 16, 1857 (“A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.”); February 18, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 65.”); February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°); February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon.") See also February 8. 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring. Compare February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day."); February 6, 1855 ("The coldest morning this winter. Our thermometer stands at -14° at 9 A.M"); February 7, 1854 ("This morning was one of the coldest in the winter."); February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time."); February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock."); February 8, 1861 ("Coldest day yet; -22 ° at least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day."); February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”); February 11, 1858 ("At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. "); February 25, 1855 ("Thermometer at 7° at 7.30 A.M.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

The river is fairly breaking up . . .  It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least. See April 3, 1856 ("The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up. It is surprising what progress has been made since yesterday. It is now generally open about the town.”); April 7, 1856 ("Surprised to find the river not broken up just above this [Hubbard] bridge and as far as we can see, probably through Fair Haven Pond. Probably in some places you can cross the river still on the ice. “) See also February 21, 1857 ("The river for some days has been open and its sap visibly flowing, like the maple.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

Men are out with guns after muskrats, and even boats.  See January 29, 1859 ("Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash.");  February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. "); March 17, 1859 ("River risen still higher . . .  A great many musquash have been killed within a week. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

To the old Hunt house. See February 1, 1853 ("Dr. Bartlett tells me that it was Adam Winthrop, a grandson of the Governor, who sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. I saw the old window, some eighteen inches square, of diamond squares, four or five inches across, set in lead, on the back side the house."):  September 21, 1855 ("The upper story projects in front and at ends seven or eight inches over the lower, and the gables above a foot over this."); December 20, 1857 ("The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers."); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log");  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."); March 13, 1859 ("The Hunt house, to draw from memory . . . looked like this :

See also Hosmer - Hunt House (circa 1672)

February 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 17

River breaking up –

men in boats are out with guns

after muskrats.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Measuring the Hunt House.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

Genius has evanescent boundaries

February 16. 

8 a.m. — To Lee house site again. 

It was a rough-cast house when I first knew it. The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650, but not the rest distinctly. I find that this recess was not in the cellar, but on the west side of the parlor, which was on the same level with the upper cellar at the west end of the house. It was on the back side of a cupboard (in that parlor), which was a few inches deep at the bottom and sloped back to a foot perhaps at top, or on the brick jog three inches at bottom and five and a half at top, and had shelves. The sitting-room of late was on the same level, the west side of this chimney. 

The old part of the chimney, judging from the clay and the size of the brick, was seven feet wide east and west and about ten north and south. There was the back side of an old oven visible on the south side (late the front of the house) under the stairs (that had been), which had been filled up with the large bricks in clay. 

The chimney above and behind the oven and this recess had been filled in with great stones, many much bigger than one's head, packed in clay mixed with the coarsest meadow-hay. Sometimes there were masses of pure clay and hay a foot in diameter. There was a very great proportion of the hay, consisting of cut-grass, three-sided carex, ferns, and still stouter woody stems, apparently a piece of corn-husk one inch wide and several long. And impressions in the clay of various plants, — grasses, ferns, etc., — exactly like those in coal in character. These are perhaps the oldest pressed plants in Concord. I have a mass eight or nine inches in diameter which is apparently one third vegetable. About these stones there is generally only the width (four and one quarter inches) of one brick, so that the chimney was a mere shell. 

Though the inscription was in a coarse mortar mixed with straw, the sooty bricks over which it was spread were laid in a better mortar, without straw, and yet the mass of the bricks directly above this recess, in the chimney, were all laid in clay. Perhaps they had used plastering there instead of clay because it was a fireplace. A thin coating of whiter and finer mortar or plastering without straw had been spread over the sloping and rounded chimney above the recess and on each side and below it, and this covered many small bricks mingled with the large ones, and though this looked more modern, the straw-mixed mortar of the inscription overlapped at the top about a foot, proving the coarser mortar the more recent. 

The inscription, then, was made after the chimney was built, when some alteration was made, and a small brick had come to be used. Yet so long ago that straw was mixed with the mortar. 

If that recess was an old fireplace, then, apparently, the first house fronted east, for the oven was on the south side. 

A boy who was at the fire said to me, "This was the chimney in which the cat was burned up; she ran into a stove, and we heard her cries in the midst of the fire." Parker says there was no cat; she was drowned. 

According to Shattuck, Johnson, having the period from 1645 to 1650 in view, says of Concord that it had been more populous. "The number of families at present are about 50. Their buildings are conveniently placed, chiefly in one straite street under a sunny banke in a low level," etc. (History, page 18.) 

According to Shattuck (page 14), Governor Winthrop "selected (judiciously, I think) a lot in Concord [apparently in 1638], which 'he intended to build upon,' near where Captain Humphrey Hunt now lives." 

I was contending some time ago that our meadows must have been wetter once than they now are, else the trees would have got up there more. I see that Shattuck says under 1654 (page 33), "The meadows were some what drier, and ceased to be a subject of frequent complaint." 

According to Wood's "New England's Prospect," the first settlers of Concord for meat bought "venison or rockoons" of the Indians. The latter must have been common then. The wolves robbed them of their swine.

February 16, 2019

A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.

I perceive that some, commonly talented, persons are enveloped and confined by a certain crust of manners, which, though it may sometimes be a fair and transparent enamel, yet only repels and saddens the beholder, since by its rigidity it seems to repress all further expansion. They are viewed as at a distance, or like an insect under a tumbler. They have, as it were, prematurely hardened both seed and shell, and this has severely taxed, if not put a period to, the life of the plant. This is to stand upon your dignity. 

Genius has evanescent boundaries, like an altar from which incense rises. 

The former are, after all, but hardened sinners in a mild sense. The pearl is a hardened sinner. Manners get to be human parchment, in which sensible books are often bound and honorable titles engrossed, though they may be very stiff and dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1857

To Lee house site again. See February 15, 1857 ("The Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before,"); February 17, 1857 ("E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house.")

A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58. See February 16, 1854 ("For the last month the weather has been remarkably changeable; hardly three days together alike."); February 16, 1856 ("It is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December, when the thermometer stood at 50°. To-day it is at 44. I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts."); see also February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°."); February 24, 1857 ("[It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°.")

.
Genius has evanescent boundaries.  See February 16, 1859 ("Any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution"); See also January 9, 1853.("Perhaps, all that is best in our experience in middle life may be resolved into the memory of our youth ! ...If the genius visits me now I am not quite taken off my feet, but I remember how this experience is like, but less than, that I had long since."); November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have always reaped unexpected and incalculable advantages from carrying out at last, however tardily, any little enterprise which my genius suggested to me long ago as a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course. . . . Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him."). Also May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations."); February 9, 1852; ("The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant . . . a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations.")

February 15, 1857 <<<<<                                                                         >>>>> February 17, 1857

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,   Genius has evanescent boundaries

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

Lee House, circa 1650, burns

February 15.

About the 1st of January, when I was surveying the Lee farm, Captain Elwell, the proprietor, asked me how old I thought the house was. I looked into Shattuck's History and found that, according to him, "Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656. His farm, estimated at three hundred and fifty acres, lay between the two rivers, and descended to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, whose posterity successively held it for more than one hundred years. . . . He d. June 16, 1701." (Vide page 389.) 

Shattuck says that the principal sachem of our Indians, Tahattawan, lived "near Nahshawtuck hill." Shattuck (page 28) says that the celebrated Waban originally lived in Concord, and he describes Squaw Sachem and John Tahattawan, son of Tahattawan, as Musketaquid Indians. In 1684 " Mantatukwet, a Christian Indian of Natick, aged 70 years or there abouts," according to the Register at Cambridge, de posed "that about 50 years since he lived within the bounds of that place which is now called Concord, at the foot of an hill, named Nahshawtuck, now in the possession of Mr. Henry Woodis," etc. (page 7). A vote of Henry Woodies in 1654 is mentioned. Under date 1666, Shattuck finds in the South Quarter, among the names of the town at that time, "Henry Woodhouse 1 [lot] 360 [acres]," etc. 

When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i. e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester. (It took fire and came near being destroyed in the night of the previous December 18th, early in morning. I was the first to get there from town.) In the course of the forenoon of yesterday I walked up to the site of the house, whither many people were flocking, on foot and in carriages. There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night. 

On my way I met Abel Hunt, to whom I observed that it was perhaps the oldest house in town. "No," said he, "they saw the date on it during the fire, — 1707." 

When I arrived I inquired where the date had been seen, and read it for myself on the chimney, but there was too much smouldering fire to permit of my approaching it nearly. I was interested in the old elm near the southeast corner of the house, which I found had been a mere shell a few years since, now filled up with brick. Flood, who has lived there, told me that Wheeler asked his advice with regard to that tree, — whether he could do better than lay the axe at its root. F. told him that he had seen an ash in the old country which was in the same condition, and is a tenderer tree than an " elum,"  preserved by being filled up, and with masonry, and then cemented over. 

So, soon after, the mason was set to work upon it under his directions, Flood having scraped out all the rotten wood first with a hoe. The cavity was full three feet wide and eight or ten high commencing at the ground. The mason had covered the bricks and rounded off with mortar, which he had scored with his trowel so that [one] did not observe but it was bark. It seemed an admirable plan, and not only improved the appearance but the strength and durability of the tree. 

This morning (the 15th), it having rained in the night, and thinking the fire would be mostly out, I made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. By laying down boards on the bricks and cinders, which were quite too hot to tread on and covered a smothered fire, I was able to reach the chimney. 

The inscription was on the east side of the east chimney (which had fallen), at the bottom, in a cupboard on the west side of the late parlor, which was on a level with the ground on the east and with the cellar on the extreme west and the cellar kitchen on the north. There was a narrow lower (milk) cellar south and southeast of it, and an equally lower and narrower cellar east of it, under the parlor. This side of the chimney was perhaps fifteen feet from the east side of the house and as far from the north side. The inscription was in a slight recess in the chimney three feet four inches wide and a little more in height up and down, as far as I could see into the pile of bricks, thus : —

It appeared to have been made by the finger or a stick, in the mortar when fresh, which had been spread an inch to an inch and a quarter thick over the bricks, and, where it was too dry and hard, to have been pecked with the point of a trowel. The first three words and the " 16 " were perfectly plain, the " 5 " was tolerably plain, though some took it for a three, but I could feel it yet more distinctly. The mortar was partly knocked off the rest, apparently by this fire, but the top of some capital letter like a "C," and the letters "netty" were about as plain as represented, and the rest looked like " Henry " (Woodhouse ?) or " l (t ?) kinry " ( ?) the " y " ( ?) at end being crowded for want of room next the side. These last two words quite uncertain. 

The surface of this recess was slightly swelling or bulging, somewhat like the outside of an oven, and above it the chimney was sloped and rounded off to the narrower shaft of it. The letters were from two and one half to three inches long and one eighth to one half inch deep. This chimney, as well as the more recent westerly one, had been built chiefly with clay mortar, and I brought away a brick, of a soft kind, eight and seven eighths inches — some nine — long, four and one fourth plus wide, varying one fourth, and two and one half thick, though there were some much smaller near it, probably not so old. The clay (for mortar) was about as hard as mortar on it. The mortar in which the inscription was made contained considerable straw (?) and some lumps of clay, now crumbling like sand, with the lime and sand. The outside was white, but the interior ash-colored. 

I discovered that the mortar of the inscription was not so old as the chimney, for the bricks beneath it, over which it was spread, were covered with soot, uniformly to the height of seven or eight feet, and the mortar fell off with an eighth of an inch thickness of this soot adhering to it, as if the recess had been a fireplace mortared over. 

I have just been reading the account of Dr. Ball's sufferings on the White Mountains. Of course, I do not wonder that he was lost. I should say: Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass; salt pork and hard-bread and salt; fish-hooks and lines; a good jack-knife, at least, if not a hatchet, and perhaps a gun; matches in a vial stopped water-tight; some strings and paper. 

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion, though in the midst of cities, else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. 

HOW TO CATCH A PIG 

If it is a wild shoat, do not let him get scared; shut up the dogs and keep mischievous boys and men out of the way. Think of some suitable inclosure in the neighborhood, no matter if it be a pretty large field, if it chances to be tightly fenced; and with the aid of another prudent person give the pig all possible opportunities to enter it. Do not go very near him nor appear to be driving him, only let him avoid you, persuade him to prefer that inclosure. If the case is desperate and it is necessary, you may make him think that you wish him to anywhere else but into that field, and he will be pretty sure to go there. Having got him into that inclosure and put up the fence, you can contract it at your leisure. When you have him in your hands, if he is obstinate, do not try to drive him with a rope round one leg. Spare the neighbors' ears and your pig's feelings, and put him into a cart or wheelbarrow. 

The brick above described appears to be of the same size with those of Governor Craddock's house in Medford, said to have been built in 1634 and measured by Brooks. (Vide Book of Facts.) It is remarkable that though Elwell, the last occupant of this house, never has seen this inscription, it being in this obscure nook in the cellar, the inscriber's purpose is served, for now nothing stands but the other chimney and the foundation of this, and the inscription is completely exposed to the daylight and to the sun, and far more legible even a rod or two off than it could have been when made. 

There it is, staring all visitors in the face, on that clear space of mortar just lifted above the mouldering ruins of the chimney around it. Yesterday you could not get within a rod of it, but distinctly read it over the furnace of hot bricks and coals. I brought away a brick and a large flake of the mortar with letters on it, but it crumbled in my hands, and I was reminded of the crumbling of some of the slabs of Nineveh in the hands of Layard as soon as brought to light, and felt a similar grief because I could not transport it entire to a more convenient place than that scorching pile, or even lay the crumbling mass down, without losing forever the outlines and the significance of those yet undeciphered words. But I laid it down, of necessity, and that was the end of it. 

There was our sole Nineveh slab, perhaps the oldest engraving in Concord. [No; some gravestones are undoubtedly older.] 

Webster prided himself on being the first farmer in the south parish of Marshfield, but if he was the first they must have been a sorry set, for his farming was a complete failure. It cost a great deal more than it came to. He used other people's capital, and was insolvent when he died, so that his friends and relatives found it difficult to retain the place, if indeed they have not sold it. How much cheaper it would have been for the town or county to have maintained him in the alms house than as a farmer at large! How many must have bled annually to manure his broad potato-fields, who without inconvenience could have contributed sufficient to maintain him in the almshouse!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1857

February 14. February 15. February 16

The Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up . . . tI made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. See February 16, 1857 ("To Lee house site again . . .The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650,"); February 17, 1857 ("The bricks of the old [Lee]chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick . . .E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house."); February 27, 1857 ("I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house!")

historical assessmetnt form Tanglewood drive ( this land with a long history with the Woodis and Lee families going back to the 1660s.  The Lee farm and nearby Conant farm were favorite spots of Thoreau, who visited in all seasons to view the landscape from Conantum and Fairhaven Hill and to walk “Lee’s Cliff” where he had gone as a boy for picnics with his family. Thoreau named the area Conantum in about 1845, while living on Walden Pond and writing the first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He wrote, “There is a pleasant track on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my mind; -- the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,--places where one may have many thoughts and not decide anything.”)

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion. . . else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. See January 9, 1855 ("Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow."); March 29, 1853 ("We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, . . .Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")