A man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend.

August 23.

Saturday.

To Walden to bathe at 5.30 A. M.

Traces of the heavy rains in the night. The sand and gravel are beaten hard by them. Three or four showers in succession.

But the grass is not so wet as after an ordinary dew.

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.

At the commencement of my walk I saw no traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular meadows and high up some brooks’valleys, and far in the Deep Cut the wood fog.

First muskmelon this morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest.

Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity!

It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses.

A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests.

Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods!

It is not wise to waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early humblebees, come out on the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant horns from far in the horizon over the woods. It was long before I detected the bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded, like the shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting the king of day.

The farmers now carry — those who have got them — their early potatoes and onions to market, starting away early in the morning or at midnight. I see them returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble those who had not been so provident as to get their hay from the Great Meadows, where it is often lost.

P. M. – Walk to Annursnack and back over stone bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find anything attractive in certain mere trivial employments of men, — that I skip men so commonly, and their affairs, — the professions and the trades, — do not elevate them at least in my thought and get some material for poetry out of them directly. I will not avoid, then, to go by where these men are repairing the stone bridge, — see if I cannot see poetry in that, if that will not yield me a reflection.

It is narrow to be confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The greatest and wisest will still be related to men.

Why not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees? May not some light be reflected from them as from the stems of trees? I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least.

They are perhaps better animals than men.

Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and affairs with sympathy, though you ever so speak as to suggest a contrast between them and the ideal and divine.

You may be excused if you are always pathetic, but do not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself.

Live thus deliberately for the most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day.

It was long before I could find him, though all the while within a foot or two. I did not know whether to search amid the grass and stones or amid the leaves. At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while under an alder leaf two feet from the ground, - a slender green fellow with long feelers and transparent wings.

When he shrilled, his wings, which opened on each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to his body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each other. The apparently wingless female, as I thought, was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even road in which we may be walking holds its level toward the horizon at a tangent to the earth, is not convex with the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, Epilobium coloratum, colored willow-herb, near the spring.

Also Polygonum sagittatum, scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads which the sun delights to shine along in an August afternoon, playing truant; which seem to stretch themselves with terrene jest as the weary traveller journeys on; where there are three white sandy furrows (lira), two for the wheels and one between them for the horse, with endless green grass borders between and room on each side for huckleberries and birches; where the walls indulge in freaks, not always parallel to the ruts, and goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began to border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was so long; from no point on which can you be said to be at any definite distance from a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air.

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge.

There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture.

When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted, and what wonder if I do not speak to thee? 

I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1851

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering. See  August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 (" It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season."); August 22, 1859 The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Blue Vervain

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled. See May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); April 16, 1861 ("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake")

 Account to yourself –

always resolve to live 

deliberately.

HDT ~ August 23, 1851

Ricketson's shanty

April 10. 

Friday. Rain. 

D. R.’s shanty is about half a dozen rods southwest of his house (which may be forty rods from the road), nearly between his house and barn; is twelve by fourteen feet, with seven-feet posts, with common pent roof. In building it, he directed the carpenter to use Western boards and timber, though some Eastern studs (spruce?) were inserted. He had already occupied a smaller shanty at “ Woodlee ” about a mile south. The roof is shingled and the sides made of matched boards and painted a light clay-color with chocolate (?) colored blinds. 

Within, it is not plastered and is open to the roof, showing the timbers and rafters and rough boards and cross-timbers overhead as if ready for plastering. 

The door is at the east end with a small window on each side of it; a similar window on each side the building, and one at the west end, the latter looking down the garden walk. In front of the last window is a small box stove with a funnel rising to a level with the plate, and there inserted in a small brick chimney which rests on planks. 

On the south side the room, against the stove, is a rude settle with a coarse cushion and pillow; on the opposite side, a large low desk, with some book-shelves above it; on the same side, by the window, a small table covered with books; and in the northeast corner, behind the door, an old-fashioned secretary, its pigeonholes stuffed with papers. 

On the opposite side as you enter, is place for fuel, which the boy leaves each morning, a place to hang greatcoats. There were two small pieces of carpet on the floor, and Ricketson or one of his guests swept out the shanty each morning. There was a small kitchen clock hanging in the southwest Corner and a map of Bristol County behind the settle. 

The west and northwest side is well-nigh covered with slips of paper, on which are written some sentence or paragraph from R.’s favorite books. I noticed, among the most characteristic, Dibdin’s “ Tom Tackle,” a translation of Anaereon’s “Cicada,” lines celebrating tobacco, Milton’s “How charming is divine philosophy,” etc., “Inveni requiem: Spes et Fortuna valete. Nil mihi vobiscum est: ludite nunc alios” (is it Petrarch?) (this is also over the door), “ Mors aequo pulsat,” etc., some lines of his own in memory of A. J. Downing, “Not to be in a hurry,” over the desk, and many other quotations celebrating retirement, country life, simplicity, humanity, sincerity, etc., etc., from Cowper and other English poets, and similar extracts from newspapers. 

There were also two or three advertisements, — one of a cattle-show exhibition, another warning not to kill birds contrary to law (he being one of the subscribers ready to enforce the act), advertisement of a steamboat on Lake Winnepiseogee, etc., cards of his business friends. The size of different brains from Hall’s Journal of Health, and “Take the world easy.” A sheet of blotted blotting—paper tacked up, and of Chinese character from a tea-chest. 

Also a few small pictures and pencil sketches, the latter commonly caricatures of his visitors or friends, as “ The Trojan ” (Charming) and “ Van Best.” I take the more notice of these particulars because his peculiarities are so commonly unaffected. He has long been accustomed to put these scraps on his walls and has a basketful somewhere, saved from the old shanty. Though there were some quotations which had no right there, I found all his peculiarities faithfully expressed, —his humanity, his fear of death, love of retirement, simplicity, etc. 

The more characteristic books were Bordley’s “ Husbandry,” Drake’s “Indians,” Barber’s “Historical Collections,” Zimmermann on Solitude, Bigelow’s “Plants of Boston, etc.,” Farmer’s “Register of the First Settlers of New England,” Marshall’s “Garden ing,” Nicol’s “ Gardener,” John Woolman. “The Mod ern Horse Doctor,” Downing‘s “Fruits, etc.,” “The Farmer’s Library,” “Walden,” Dymond’s Essays, Job Scott’s Journal, Morton’s Memorial, Bailey’s Diction ary, Downing’s “Landscape Gardening, etc.,” “The Task,” Nuttall’s Ornithology, Morse’s Gazetteer, “The Domestic Practice of Hydropathy,” “ John Buncle,” Dwight’s Travels, Virgil, Young’s “Night Thoughts,” “ History of Plymouth,” and other “ Shanty Books.” 

There was an old gun, hardly safe to fire, said to be loaded with an inextractable charge, and also an old sword over the door, also a tin sign “D. Ricketson’s a small crumpled horn there. I counted more than twenty rustic canes scattered about, a dozen (or fifteen pipes of various patterns, mostly the common,, two spy glasses, an open paper of tobacco, an Indian’s jaw dug up, a stuffed blue jay and pine grosbeak, and a. rude Indian stone hatchet, etc., etc.

There was a box with fifteen or twenty knives, mostly very large and old: fashioned jack-knives, kept for curiosity, occasionally given away to a boy or friend. A large book full of pencil sketches to be inspected by whomsoever, containing countless sketches of his friends and acquaintances and himself and of wayfaring men whom he had met, Quakers, etc., etc., and now and then a vessel under full sail or an old-fashioned house, sketched on a peculiar pea-green paper. 

A pail of water stands behind the door, with a peculiar tin cup for drinking made in France.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1857