Preparing for the winter voyage.

November 28

Thursday.

Cold drizzling and misty rains, which have melted the little snow.

The farmers are beginning to pick up their dead wood.

Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage.

It is remarkable, but nevertheless true, as far as my observation goes, that women, to whom we commonly concede a somewhat finer and more sibylline nature, yield a more implicit obedience even to their animal instincts than men. The nature in them is stronger, the reason weaker. 

THE LITTLE IRISH BOY 

I am the little Irish boy 

     That lives in the shanty. 

I am four years old to-day 

     And shall soon be one and twenty. 

     I shall grow up 

     And be a great man, 

     And shovel all day 

    As hard as I can. 

     Down in the Deep Cut, 

     *  *   *  * *

    Where the men lived 

    Who made the railroad.

For supper 

     I have some potato 

          And sometimes some bread, 

     And then, if it's cold, 

         I go right to bed. 

     I lie on some straw 

     Under my father's coat. 

At recess I play 

With little Billy Gray, 

And when school is done, 

Then home I run. 

And if I meet the cars, 

     I get on the other track, 

And then I know whatever comes 

     I need n't look back. 

My mother does not cry, 

     And my father does not scold, 

For I am a little Irish boy, 

     And I'm four years old. 

Every day I go to school 

     Along the railroad. 

It was so cold it made me cry 

     The day that it snowed. 

And if my feet ache 

     I do not mind the cold, 

For I am a little Irish boy, 

     And I'm four years old.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1850

The farmers are beginning to pick up their dead wood. See November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. . . . while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips "); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. ")

 

Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage. See December 3, 1856 ( Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks . . . The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 6, 1859 ("I took out my boots . . . and went forth in the snow. That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.") Compare March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”)

the little irish boy see here

In a day or two 

the walker thinks of boots for

the winter voyage.

Was introduced to two young women.

November 14.

Friday.

Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town.

Unexpectedly find Heywood's Pond frozen over thinly, it being shallow and coldly placed. 

In the evening went to a party. It is a bad place to go to, — thirty or forty persons, mostly young women, in a small room, warm and noisy.

Was introduced to two young women.

The first one was as lively and loquacious as a chickadee; had been accustomed to the society of watering-places, and therefore could get no refreshment out of such a dry fellow as I. 

The other was said to be pretty-looking, but I rarely look people in their faces, and, moreover, I could not hear what she said, there was such a clacking, — could only see the motion of her lips when I looked that way.

I could imagine better places for conversation, where there should be a certain degree of silence surrounding you, and less than forty talking at once. Why, this afternoon, even, I did better.

There was old Mr. Joseph Hosmer and I ate our luncheon of cracker and cheese together in the woods. I heard all he said, though it was not much, to be sure, and he could hear me. And then he talked out of such a glorious repose, taking a leisurely bite at the cracker and cheese between his words; and so some of him was communicated to me, and some of me to him, I trust.

These parties, I think, are a part of the machinery of modern society, that young people may be brought together to form marriage connections. What is the use of going to see people whom yet you never see, and who never see you? I begin to suspect that it is not necessary that we should see one another.

Some of my friends make singular blunders. They go out of their way to talk with certain young women of whom they think, or have heard, that they are pretty, and take pains to introduce me to them. That may be a reason why they should look at them, but it is not a reason why they should talk with them.

I confess that I am lacking a sense, perchance, in this respect, and I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has regular features. The society of young women is the most unprofitable I have ever tried. They are so light and flighty that you can never be sure whether they are there or not there.

I prefer to talk with the more staid and settled, settled for life, in every sense.

I met a man yesterday afternoon in the road who behaved as if he was deaf, and I talked with him in the cold in a loud tone for fifteen minutes, but that uncertainty about his ears, and the necessity I felt to talk loudly, took off the fine edge of what I had to say and prevented my saying anything satisfactory. It is bad enough when your neighbor does not understand you, but if there is any uncertainty as to whether he hears you, so that you are obliged to become your own auditor, you are so much the poorer speaker, and so there is a double failure.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1851

Unexpectedly find Heywood's Pond frozen over thinly, it being shallow and coldly placed. See November 23, 1850 (" If I am surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I am much more surprised to find a pond in the woods, containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that I walk across it. It is in a cold corner, where a pine wood excludes the sun. In the larger ponds and the river, of course, there is no ice yet. I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.") ; December 11, 1853 ("We find Heywood's Pond frozen five inches thick.. . . This ice being whitened and made partially opaque by heat, while the surface is quite smooth, perhaps from new freezings, reflects the surrounding trees, their forms and colors, distinctly like water. The white air-bubbles are the quicksilver on the back of the mirror.")   See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman. Compare  November 13, 1851 ("Just spent a couple of hours (eight to ten) with Miss Mary Emerson at Holbrook's. The wittiest and most vivacious woman that I know,"); April 23, 1857 ("I saw at Ricketson's a young woman, Miss Kate Brady, twenty years old. . .I  never heard a girl or woman express so strong a love for nature.")

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay.

September 26.

P. M. — To Clamshell by boat. 

climbing nightshade/bittersweet 

(Solanum dulcamara)

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. I do not know any clusters more graceful and beautiful than these drooping cymes of scarlet or translucent cherry-colored elliptical berries with steel-blue (or lead?) purple pedicels (not peduncles) like those leaves on the tips of the branches. These in the water at the bend of the river are peculiarly handsome, they are so long an oval or ellipse. No berries, methinks, are so well spaced and agreeably arranged in their drooping cymes, — some what hexagonally like a honeycomb. Then what a variety of color! The peduncle and its branches are green, the pedicels and sepals only that rare steel-blue purple, and the berries a clear translucent cherry red. They hang more gracefully over the river's brim than any pendants in a lady's ear. The cymes are of irregular yet regular form, not too crowded, elegantly spaced. 

Yet they are considered poisonous! Not to look at, surely. Is it not a reproach that so much that is beautiful is poisonous to us? Not in a stiff, flat cyme, but in different stages above and around, finding ample room in space. But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? 

A drooping berry should always be of an oval or pear shape. Nature not only produces good wares, but puts them up handsomely. Witness these pretty-colored and variously shaped skins in which her harvests, the seeds of her various plants, are now being packed away. I know in what bags she puts her nightshade seeds, her cranberries, viburnums, cornels, by their form and color, often by their fragrance; and thus a legion of consumers find them. 

The celtis berries are still green. 

The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. I saw a parcel suddenly rise to the surface of their own accord, leaving the axis nearly bare. Many are long since bare. They float, at present, but probably sink at last. There are a great many floating amid the pads and in the wreck washed up, of these singular green spidery(?)-looking seeds. Probably they are the food of returning water-fowl. They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. 

I hear a frog or two, either palusiris or halecina, croak and work faintly, as in spring, along the side of the river. So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. 

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs, like pigeons, standing in the water by the bare, flat ammannia shore, their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert. 

Heavy Haynes says he has seen one or two fish hawks within a day or two. Also that a boy caught a very large snapping turtle on the meadow a day or two ago. He once dug one up two or three feet deep in the meadow in winter when digging mud. He was rather dormant. Says he remembers a fish-house that stood by the river at Clamshell. 

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. I see some, — though it requires a very favorable light to detect them, they are so fine, — blowing off perfectly straight horizontally over the water, only half a dozen inches above it, as much as seven feet, one end fastened to a reed, the other free. They look as stiff as spears, yet the free end waves back and forth horizontally in the air several feet. They work thus in calm and fine weather when the water is smooth. Yet they can run over the surface of the water readily. 

The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs, heart, and liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it. 

How feeble women, or rather ladies, are! They can not bear to be shined on, but generally carry a parasol to keep off the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1859

The Solanum dulcamara berries are another kind which grows in drooping clusters. See September 4, 1859 ("Three or four plants are peculiar now for bearing plentifully their fruit in drooping cymes, viz. the elder berry and the silky cornel and the Viburnum Lentago and Solanum Dulcamara.")

But why should they not be poisonous? Would it not be in bad taste to eat these berries which are ready to feed another sense? See September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man . [I]t is strange that we do not devote an hour in the year to gathering those which are beautiful to the eye. It behooves me to go a-berrying in this sense once a year at least.")

They are ripe, like the seeds of different lilies, at the time the fowl return from the north. See September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water . . So, too, probably (for I do not see them) the yellow and white lilies are ripening their seeds in the water and mud beneath the surface.")

So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. See September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring."):  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind 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.") and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.")

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs. See August 5, 1855 ("Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.”); September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”);September 25, 1858 ("Melvin says . . . that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also"); October 20, 1859 ("Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe.")

Observed the spiders at work at the head of Willow Bay. Their fine lines are extended from one flag or bur-reed to another, even six or eight feet, perfectly parallel with the surface of the water and only a few inches above it. Compare September 12, 1858 ("In Hubbard’s ditched meadow, this side his grove, I see a great many large spider’s webs stretched across the ditches, about two feet from bank to bank, though the thick woven part is ten or twelve inches. They are parallel, a few inches or a foot or more apart, and more or less vertical, and attached to a main cable stretched from bank to bank. They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

September 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 26

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 © 2009-2024