 CHAPTER IX November 876 The forenoon ledden and cloudy, not cold or wet, but indicating both. As I hobble down here and sit by the silent pond, how different from the excitement amid which, in the cities, millions of people are now waiting news of yesterday's presidential election, or receiving and discussing the result. In this secluded place, uncared forth unknown. CROWS AND CROWS November 14. As I sit here by the creek, resting after my walk, a warm langer bathes me from the sun. No sound but a cawing of crows, and no motion but their black flying figures from overhead, reflected in the mirror of the pond below. Indeed, a principal feature of the scene today is these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and their countless flocks and processions moving from place to place, and at times almost darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery-looking glass by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a neighboring wood. A winter day on the sea-beach. One bright December midday lately, I spent down on the New Jersey seashore, reaching it by a little more than an hour's railroad trip over the old Camden and Atlantic. I had started, be times, fortified by nice, strong coffee and a good breakfast, cooked by the hands I love, my dear sister lose, how much better it makes the victuals taste, and then assimilate, strengthen you, perhaps make the whole day comfortable afterwards. Five or six miles at the last our track entered a broad region of salt-grass meadows, intersected by lagoons, and cut up everywhere by watery runs. The seji perfume, delightful to my nostrils, reminded me of the mash and south bay of my native island. I could have journeyed contentedly till night through these flat and odorous sea prairies. From half past eleven till two, I was nearly all the time along the beach, or inside of the ocean, listening to its hoarse murmur, and inhaling the bracing and welcome breezes. First a rapid five-mile drive over the hard sand, our carriage wheels hardly made dense in it. Then after dinner, as there were nearly two hours to spare, I walked off in another direction, hardly met or saw a person. And taking possession of what appeared to have been the reception-room of an old bath-house range, had a broad expanse of view all to myself, quaint, refreshing, unimpeded, a dry area of sedge and Indian grass immediately before and around me, space, simple, unornamented space. Distant vessels and the far-off, just-visible trailing smoke of an inward-bound steamer, more plainly ships, brigs, schooners in sight, most of them with every sail set to the firm and steady wind. The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore. How one dwells on their simplicity, even fecuity! What is it in us aroused by those indirections and directions? But that spread of waves and gray-white beach, salt, monotonous, senseless, such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance, so indescribably comforting, even this winter day, grim yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual, striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music I have ever read, seen, heard. Yet, let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read those poems and heard that music. Seashore fancies. Even as a boy I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps a poem, about the seashore, that suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying, the liquid, that curious lurking something, as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit, which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is, blending the real and ideal, and each made portion of the other. Ours, days, in my long island youth and early manhood, I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney Island, or away east to the Hamptons or Montauk, once at the latter place, by the old lighthouse, nothing but sea tossings in sight in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. I remember well, I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid mystic theme. Afterward, I recollect how it came to me that, instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the seashore should be in an invisible influence, a pervading gauge and tally for me in my composition. Let me give a hint here to young writers. I am not sure, but I have unwittingly followed out the same rule with other powers besides sea and shores, avoiding them in the way of any dead set at poetizing them as too big for formal handling. Quite satisfied if I could indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if only once, but enough, that we have really absorbed each other and understand each other. There is a dream, a picture, that for years at intervals, sometimes quite long ones, but surely again in time, has come noiselessly up before me, and I really believe fiction as it is, has entered largely into my practical life, certainly into my writings and shaped and colored them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of interminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually, grandly rolling in upon it, with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low-bass drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at times for years. Sometimes I wake at night and can hear and see it plainly. In memory of Tom Paine, spoken at Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia, Sunday, January 28, 77, for 140th anniversary of T.P.'s birthday. Some thirty-five years ago in New York City at Tammany Hall, of which place I was then a frequenter, I happened to become quite well acquainted with Thomas Paine's perhaps most intimate chum, and certainly his later years very frequent companion, a remarkably fine old man, Colonel Fellows, who may yet be remembered by some stray relics of that period and spot, if you will allow me I will first give a description of the Colonel himself. He was tall, of military bearing, aged about seventy-eight, I should think, hair white as snow, clean shaved on the face, dressed very neatly, a tailcoat of blue cloth with metal buttons, buff vest, pantaloons of drab color, and his neck, breast, and wrists showing the whitest of linen. Under all circumstances, fine manners. A good but not profuse talker, his wits still fully about him. Balanced, and live, and undimmed as ever. He kept pretty fair help, though so old, for employment, for he was poor, he had a post as constable of some of the upper courts. I used to think him very picturesque on the fringe of a crowd holding a tall staff, with his erect form, and his superb, bare, thick-haired, closely cropped white head. The judges and young lawyers, with whom he was ever a favorite, and the subject of respect, used to call him Aristides. It was the general opinion among them that if manly rectitude and the instincts of absolute justice remained vital anywhere about New York City Hall, or Tammany, they were to be found in Colonel Fellows. He liked young men and enjoyed to leisurely talk with them over a social glass of toddy after his day's work. He, on these occasions, never drank but one glass. And it was at reiterated meetings of this kind in old Tammany's back parlor of those days, that he told me much about Thomas Paine. At one of our interviews he gave me a minute account of Paine's sickness and death. In short, from those talks I was and am satisfied that my old friend, with his marked advantages, had mentally, morally, and emotionally gauged the author of Common Sense, and, besides giving me a good portrait of his appearance and manners, had taken the true measure of his interior character. Paine's practical demeanor, and much of his theoretical belief, was a mixture of the French and English schools of a century ago, and the best of both. Like most old-fashioned people, he drank a glass or two every day, but was no tipler, nor intemperate, let alone being a drunkard. He lived simply and economically, but quite well, was always cheery and courteous, perhaps occasionally a little blunt, having very positive opinions upon politics, religion, and so forth. That he labored well and wisely for the states in the trying period of their paturition, and in the seeds of their character there seems to me no question. I dare not say how much of what our union is owning and enjoying today, its independence, its ardent belief in, and substantial practice of radical human rights, and the severance of its government from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion. I dare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am inclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is. But I was not going either into an analysis or eulogium of the man. I wanted to carry you back a generation or two, and give you by indirection a moment's glance, and also to ventilate a very earnest, and I believe authentic opinion, nay, conviction, of that time, the fruit of the interviews I have mentioned, and of questioning and cross-questioning, clenched by my best information since that Thomas Paine had a noble personality as exhibited in presence, face, voice, dress, manner, and what may be called his atmosphere and magnetism, especially the later years of his life. I am sure of it. Of the foul and foolish fiction Jett told about the circumstances of his decease, the absolute fact is that, as he lived a good life, after its kind, he died calmly and philosophically, as became him. He served the embryo union with most precious service, a service that every man, woman, and child in our thirty-eight states, is to some extent receiving the benefit of today, and I for one here cheerfully, reverently throw my pebble on the cairn of his memory, as we all know the season demands, or rather will it ever be out of season, that America learn to better dwell on her choicest possession, the legacy of her good and faithful men, that she will preserve their fame, if unquestioned, or if need be, that she fail not to dissipate what clouds have intruded on that fame, and burnish it newer, truer, and brighter continually. A two-hours ice sail, February three, seventy-seven. From four to six p.m. crossing the Delaware, back again at my Camden home, unable to make our landing through the ice, our boat stanch and strong, and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky, and poorly minding her helm. Power, so important in poetry and war, is also first point of all in a winter steamboat, with long stretches of ice packs to tackle. For over two hours we bumped and beat about, the invisible ebb sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us long distances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, as I looked around, I thought there could not be presented a more chilling, arctic, grim, extended, depressing scene. Everything was yet plainly visible, for miles north and south, ice, ice, ice. but some big cakes, and no clear water in sight. The shores, piers, surfaces, roofs, shipping, mantled with snow. A faint winter vapor hung a fitting accompaniment around and over the endless whitish spread, and gave it just a tinge of steel and brown. February 6. As I cross home in the 6 p.m. boat again, the transparent shadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly slanting, curiously sparse but very large flakes of snow. On the shores, near and far, the glow of just lit gas clusters at intervals. The ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, through which our boat goes crunching, the light permeated by that peculiar evening haze right after sunset, which sometimes renders quite distant objects so distinctly. Spring overtures. Recreations. February 10. The first chirping, almost singing, of a bird today. Then I noticed a couple of honeybees spurting and humming about the open window in the sun. February 11. In the soft rose and pale gold of the declining light, this beautiful evening I heard the first hum and preparation of awakening spring, very faint, whether in the earth or roots or starting of insects I know not, but it was audible. As I leaned on a rail, I am down in my country quarters a while, and looked long at the western horizon, turning to the east, serious as the shadows deepened, came forth in dazzling splendor, and great Orion and a little to the northeast the big dipper standing on end. February 20. A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at the pond, exercising arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling thick as my wrist, twelve feet high, pulling and pushing, inspiring the good air. After I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap in virtue welling up out of the ground and tingling through me from crown to toe like health's wine. Then for addition and variety I launch forth in my vocalism. Shout to clamatory pieces, sentiments, sorrow, anger, etc., from the stock poets or plays. Or inflate my lungs and sing the wild tunes and refrains I heard of the blacks down south, or patriotic songs I learned in the army. I make the echoes ring, I tell you. As the twilight fell in a pause of these ebullitions, an owl somewhere at the other side of the creek sounded, TOO-HOO-HOO! Soft, impensive, and I fancied a little sarcastic, repeated four or five times, either to applaud the negro songs or perhaps an ironical comment on the sorrow, anger, or style of the stock poets. One of the human kinks. How is it that in all the serenity and lonesomeness of solitude, all way off here amid the hush of the forest? Alone, or as I have found in prairie wilds or mountain stillness, one is never entirely without the instinct of looking around. I never am, and others tell me the same of themselves, confidentially, for somebody to appear, or start up out of the earth, or from behind some tree or rock. Is it a lingering, inherited remains of man's primitive weariness from the wild animals, or from his savage ancestry far back? It is not at all nervousness or fear. Seems as if something unknown were possibly lurking in those bushes or solitary places. May it is quite certain there is some vital unseen presence. An Afternoon Scene February 22 Last night and today, rainy and thick, till mid-afternoon, when the wind chopped round, the clouds swiftly drew off like curtains, the clear appeared, and with it the fairest, grandest, most wondrous rainbow I ever saw, all complete, very vivid at its earth ends, dreading vast diffusions of illuminated haze, violet, yellow, drab green, in all directions overhead, through which the sun beamed, an indescribable utterance of color and light, so gorgeous yet so soft, such as I had never witnessed before. Then its continuance, a full hour passed before the last of those earth ends, disappeared. The sky behind was all spread in translucent blue, with many little white clouds and edges, to these a sunset filling, dominating the aesthetic and soul senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by the pond, just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, the western reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figures of trees. I hear now and then the flup of a pike leaping out and rippling the water. The gates opening. April 6. Palp-pupil spring, indeed, or the indications of it, I am sitting in bright sunshine at the edge of the creek, the surface just rippled by the wind, all is solitude, morning freshness negligence. For companions my two king-fishers sailing, winding, darting, dipping, sometimes capriciously separate, then flying together. I hear their guttural twittering again and again, for a while nothing but that peculiar sound. As noon approaches other birds warm up, the reedy notes of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, one a clear delicious gurgle with several other birds I cannot place. To which is joined, yes I just hear it, one low purr at intervals from some impatient hylis at the pond edge, the subulent murmur of a pretty stiff breeze, now and then through the trees. Then a poor little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whorls from somewhere up aloft in one wild-escaped freedom spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The bushes and trees are yet bare, but the beaches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of last season's foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pine yet green, and the grass not without proofs of coming fullness. And overall a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play of light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently. The common earth, the soil. The soil too, let others pen and ink the sea, the air, as I sometimes try, but now I feel to choose the common soil for theme, not else. The brown soil here, just between winter clothes and opening spring and vegetation, the rain shower at night and the fresh smell next morning, the red worms wriggling out of the ground, the dead leaves, the incipient grass, and the latent life underneath, the effort to start something, already in sheltered spots some little flowers, the distant emerald show of winter wheat and the rye fields, the yet naked trees with clear interstices, giving prospects hidden in summer, the tough fallow and the plow team, and the stout boy whistling to his horses for encouragement, and there the dark fat earth in long, slanting stripes upturned, birds and birds and birds. A little later, bright weather, an unusual melodiousness these days, last of April and first of May, from the blackbirds, and eat all sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping, or perched on trees, never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performance as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them, let me make a list of those I find here. Blackbirds, plenty, metal arcs, plenty, ring doves, cat birds, plenty, owls, cuckoos, woodpeckers, pond snipes, plenty, kingbirds, chiwinks, crows, plenty, quarks, wrens, ground wrens, robins, kingfishers, ravens, quails, gray snipes, turkey buzzards, eagles, hen hawks, high holes, yellow birds, herons, thrushes, tits, reed birds, wood pigeons. Early came the blue birds, kill deer, plover, robin, woodcock, metal arc, white-bellied swallow, sandpiper, wilson's thrush, flicker. Full-starred nights. May twenty-one. Back in Camden, again commencing one of those unusually transparent, full-starred, blue-black nights, as if to show that however lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left in the not day that can outvi it. The rarest, finest sample of long-drawn out, clear obscure from sundown to nine o'clock. I went down to the Delaware and crossed and crossed. Venus, like blazing silver well up in the west, the large, pale, thin crescent of the new moon, half an hour high, sinking languidly under a bar sinister of cloud, and then emerging. Arcturus right overhead, a faint, fragrant sea-order wafted up from the south. The gloaming, the tempered coolness, with every feature of the scene, indescribably soothing and tonic, one of those hours that give hints to the soul impossible to put in a statement. Ah, where would be any food for spirituality without night and the stars? The vacant spaciousness of the air and the veiled blue of the heavens seemed miracles enough. As the night advanced it changed its spirit and garments to ampler statelyness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, nature silently near. The great constellation of the water serpent stretched its coils over more than half the heavens. The swan without spread wings was flying down the Milky Way. The northern crown, the eagle, Lyra, all up there in their places. From the whole dome shot down points of light, rapport with me through the clear blue-black. All the usual sense of motion, all animal life seemed discarded, seemed a fiction. A curious power like the placid rest of Egyptian gods took possession, nonetheless potent for being impalpable. Earlier I had seen many bats balancing in the luminous twilight, darting their black forms hither and yawn over the river. But now they altogether disappeared. The evening star and the moon had gone, alertness and peace lay calmly couching together through the fluid universal shadows. August 26. Bright has the day been in my spirits an equal forzando. Then comes the night, different, inexpressibly pensive, with its own tender and tempered splendor. Venus lingers in the west with a voluptuous dazzle, unshown hither to this summer. Mars rises early and the red silky moon, two days past her full. Jupiter at night's meridian and the long curling, slanted scorpion stretching full view in the south, a rita's neck. Mars walks the heavens, Lord Paramount, now. All through this month I go out after supper and watch for him, sometimes getting up at midnight to take another look at his unparalleled luster. I see lately an astronomer has made out through the new Washington telescope that Mars has certainly one moon, perhaps two. Pale and distant but near in the heavens, Saturn precedes him. Mullions and mullions. Large placid mullions as summer advances velvety in texture of a light greenish drab color growing everywhere in the fields. At first earth's big rosettes in their broad-leaved, low-cluster plants, eight, ten, twenty leaves to a plant, plentiful on the fallow twenty-acre lot at the end of the lane, and especially by the ridge sides of the fences. Then close to the ground, but soon springing up, leaves as broad as my hand, and the lower ones twice as long. So fresh and dewy in the morning. Stocks now four or five, even seven or eight feet high. The farmers, I find, think the mullion a mean unworthy weed. But I have grown to a fondness for it. Every object has its lesson, and closing the suggestion of everything else. And lately I sometimes think all is concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flowered weeds. As I come down the lane early in the morning, I pause before their soft, wool-like fleece and stem and broad leaves glittering with countless diamonds. Annually for three summers now they and I have silently returned together. At such long intervals I stand or sit among them, musing, and woven with the rest of so many hours and moods of partial rehabilitation of my sane or sick spirit here as near at peace as it can be. Distant sounds. The axe of the woodcutter, the measured thud of a single threshing flail, the crowing of Chanticleer in the barnyard, with invariable responses from other barnyards, and the lowing of cattle. But most of all, or far or near, the wind, through the high treetops or through low bushes, laving one's face and hand so gently, this balmy bright moon, the coolest for a long time. September 2nd. I will not call it sighing, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression, through a monotone giving many varieties, or swift, or slow, or dense, or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there, how sibilant! Or at sea, I can imagine at this moment tossing the waves with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent of the salt, and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest. Other adjuncts. But the sun and the moon here and these times. As never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial so vast, so ardently, lovingly hot. So never a more glorious moon of nights, especially the last three or four, the great planets too, Mars never before so flaming bright, so flashing large, with slight yellow tinge. The astronomers say, is it true, nearer to us than any time the past century? And well up, Lord Jupiter, a little while since close by the moon, and in the west after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now languid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess. A sun bath nakedness, Sunday, August twenty-seven. Another day quite free from marked prostration and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly filter into me, as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across fields in the good air. As I sit here in solitude with nature, open, voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet palpable, eloquent nature. I merge myself in the scene in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear brook water, I am soothed by its soft gurgle in one place, and the horser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. Come ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left. Come get the sure virtues of creak-sure and wood and field. Two months, July and August seventy-seven, have I absorbed them, and they begin to make a new man of me. Every day, seclusion, every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners. Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my already much-restored health? That I have been almost two years off and on without drugs and medicines, and daily in the open air. Last summer I found a particularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek, originally a large, dug-out, moral pit, now abandoned, filled with bushes, trees, grass, a group of willows, a straggling bank, and a spring of delicious water running right through the middle of it with two or three little cascades. Here I retreated every hot day and follow it up this summer. Here I realized the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to nature. Never before did she come so close to me. By old habit I penciled down from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints, and outlines on the spot. Let me specifically record the satisfaction of this current forenoon, so serene and primitive, so conventionally exceptional, natural. An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses of the aforesaid dell, which I in certain thrushes, cat-birds, etc., had all to ourselves. A light southwest wind was blowing through the treetops. It was just the place and time for my adamic air bath and flesh brushing from head to foot, so hanging clothes on a rail nearby, keeping old broad-brim straw on head, and easy shoes on feet. Haven't I had a good time the last two hours? First with the stiff elastic bristles rasping arms, breast sides, till they turn scarlet, then partially bathing in the clear waters of the running brook, taking everything very leisurely, with many rests and pauses. Stepping about barefoot at every few minutes, now and then, in some neighboring black ooze, for unctuous mud bath to my feet, a brief second and third rinsing in the crystal-running waters, rubbing with the fragrant towel, slow negligent promenades on the turf, up and down in the sun, varied with occasional rests, and further frictions of the bristle brush, sometimes carrying my portable chair with me from place to place, as my range is quite extensive here, nearly a hundred rods, feeling quite secure from intrusion, and that indeed I am not at all nervous about if it accidentally happens. As I walked slowly over the grass, the sun shone out enough to show the shadow moving with me. Somehow I seemed to get identity with each and everything around me in its condition. Nature was naked, and I was also. It was too lazy, soothing and joyous equable to speculate about. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein. Perhaps the inner, never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, etc., is not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the whole corporeal body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged any more than the eyes. Sweet, sane, still nakedness in nature. Ah, if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more, is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these close of hours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in nature has never been eligible, and how many thousands there are, has not really known what purity is, nor what faith or art or health really is. Probably the whole curriculum of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the old Hellenic race, the highest height and deepest depth known to civilization in those departments, came from their natural and religious idea of nakedness. Many such hours from time to time, the last two summers, I attribute my partial rehabilitation largely to them. Some good people may think it a feeble or half-cracked way of spending one's time and thinking. Maybe it is. The Oaks and I, September 5, 77. I write this, 11 a.m., sheltered under a dense oak by the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down here. We had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull. For the before mentioned daily and simple exercise I am fond of. To pull on that young hickory sapling out there, to sway and yield to its tough, limber upright stem. Happily to get into my old sinews some of its elastic fiber and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these health poles moderately, and at intervals for nearly an hour, inhaling great draughts of fresh air. Wondering by the creek I have three or four naturally favorable spots where I rest, besides a chair I lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots convenient I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and limber boughs of beach or holly, in easy reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk muscles. I can soon feel the sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwartness, and know the virtue thereof passes from them into me. Or maybe we interchange, maybe the trees are more aware of it all than I ever thought. But now pleasantly imprisoned here under the big oak, the rain dripping in the sky covered with leaden clouds, nothing but the pond on one side and the other a spread of grass spotted with the milky blossoms of the wild carrot. The sound of an axe wielded at some distant woodpile, yet in this dull scene, as most folks would call it, why am I so almost happy here and alone? Why would any intrusion, even from people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone? Doubtless there comes a time, perhaps it has come to me, when one feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and nature objectively, which shiling and fitched are so fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realize a presence here. In clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor aesthetics will give the least explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and soul as never before. Thanks, invisible physician, for thy silent, delicious medicine, thy day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and in the weeds End of Chapter 9 Section 10 of specimen days This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Belinda Brown of Indianapolis Indiana Specimen Days by Walt Whitman Section 10 A Quintet While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak, perfectly dry and comfortable to the rattle of the drops all around, I have penciled off the mood of the hour in a little quintet which I will give you. At vacancy with nature, acceptive entities, distilling the present hour, whatever, wherever it is, and over the past, oblivion. When you get hold of it, reader dear, and how do you like it anyhow? The First Frost, Mems While I was stopping, I saw the first palpable frost on my sunrise walk, October 6th. All over the yet green spread a light blue-gray veil, giving a new show to the entire landscape. I had but little time to notice it for the sun rose cloudless and mellow warm, and as I returned along the lane, it had turned to glittering patches of wet. As I walked, I noticed the bursting pods of wild cotton, Indian hemp, they call it here, with flossy, silky contents and dark red-brown seeds, a startled rabbit. I pull a handful of the balsamic life everlasting and stuff it down in my trousers pocket for scent. Three Young Men's Deaths, December 20. Somehow I got to thinking today of Young Men's Deaths, not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically, perhaps a little artistically. Let me give the following three cases from budgets of personal memoranda, which I have been turning over, alone in my room, and resuming and dwelling on, this rainy afternoon. Who is there to whom the theme does not come home? And I don't know how it may be to others, but to me, not only is there nothing gloomy or depressing in such cases, on the contrary, as reminiscence, I find them soothing, bracing, tonic. Erastus Haskell. I just transcribed verbatim from a letter written by myself in one of the Army hospitals sixteen years ago during the Secession War. Washington, July 28, 1863. Dear M, I am writing this in the hospital, sitting by the side of a soldier. I do not expect to last many hours. His fate has been a hard one. He seems to be only about nineteen or twenty. Erastus Haskell, Company K, 141st, New York, has been out about a year, and sick or half-sick more than half that time, has been down on the peninsula, was detailed to go in the band as a Pfeiffer boy. While sick, the surgeon told him to keep up with the rest. Probably worked in March too long. He is shy, and seems to me a very sensible boy, has fine manners, never complains, was sick down on the peninsula in an old storehouse, typhoid fever. The first week this July was brought up here, journey very bad. No accommodations, no nourishments, nothing but hard jolting, and exposure enough to make a well man sick. These fearful journeys do the job for many. Arrived here on July eleventh, a silent dark-skinned Spanish-looking youth, with large, very dark blue eyes, peculiar looking. Dr. F, here, made life of his sickness, and said he would recover soon, etc. But I thought very different, and told F so repeatedly. I came near quarreling with him, about it from the first. But he laughed, and would not listen to me. About four days ago, I told Dr. he would, in my opinion, lose the boy without doubt. But F again laughed at me. The next day he changed his opinion, brought the head surgeon of the post. He said the boy would probably die, but they would make a hard fight for him. The last two days he has been lying, padding for breath, a pitiful sight. I have been with him some every day or night since he arrived. He suffers a great deal with the heat, says little or nothing, is flighty the last three days, at times knows me always, however calls me Walter, sometimes calls the name over and over and over again, musingly, abstractedly, to himself. His father lives in Breesport, Chamon County, New York, is a mechanic with a large family, is a steady religious man, his mother too is living. I have written to them, and shall write again today. Erastus has not received a word from home for months. As I sit here writing to you, M, I wish you could see the whole scene. This young man lies within reach of me, flat on his back, his hands clasped across his breast, his thick black hair cut close. He is dozing, breathing hard, every breath is spasm. It looks so cruel. He is a noble youngster, I consider him past all hope. Even there is no one with him for a long while, I am here as much as possible. William Alcott, fireman, Camden, November 1874, last Monday afternoon his widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and his other friends. I was one only lately it is true, but our love grew fast and close. The days and nights of those eight weeks by the chair of rapid decline and the bed of death gathered to the funeral of this young man who had grown up and was well known here. With nothing special perhaps to record I would give a word or two to his memory. He seemed to me not an inappropriate specimen and character and elements of that bulk of the average good American race that ebbs and flows perennially beneath the scum of erectations on the surface. Always very quiet in manner, neat in person in dress, good tempered, punctual and industrious at his work. Till he could work no longer, he just lived his steady, square, unobtrusive life in its own humble sphere, doubtless unconscious of itself, though I think there were currents of emotion and intellect undeveloped beneath, far deeper than his acquaintances ever suspected, or than he himself ever did. He was no talker, his troubles when he had any he kept to himself, and there was nothing quarrelless about him in life. He made no complaints during his last sickness. He was one of those persons that while as associates and ever thought of attributing any particular talent or grace to him, yet all insensibly really liked Billy Alcut. I too loved him. At last, after being with him quite a good deal, after hours and days of panting for breath, much of the time unconscious, for though the consumption that had been lurking in his system once thoroughly started made rapid progress, there was still great vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay dying before the close. But on Wednesday night, November 4th, where we surrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull, a longer drawn breath, a pause, a faint sigh, another, a weaker breath, another sigh, a pause again, and just a tremble, and the face of the poor wasted young man, he was just 26, fell gently over in death, on my hand, on the pillow. Charles Caswell. I extract the following verbatim from a letter to me dated September 29th from my friend John Burroughs at Asapus on Hudson, New York State. S was away when your picture came, attending his sick brother Charles, who has since died, an event that saddened me much. Charlie was younger than S, and a most attractive young fellow. He worked at my father's and had done so for two years. He was about the best specimen of a young country farmhand I ever knew. You would have loved him. He was like one of your poems, with his great strength, his blonde hair, his cheerfulness, and contentment. His universal goodwill, and his silent manly ways, he was a youth hard to match. He was murdered by an old doctor. He had typhoid fever, and the old fool bled him twice. He lived to wear out the fever, but had not the strength to rally. He was out of his head nearly all the time. In the morning, as he died in the afternoon, S was standing over him when Charlie put his arm around S's neck, and pulled his face down and kissed him. S said he knew then the end was near. S stuck to him, day and night, to the last. When I was home in August, Charlie was cradling on the hill, and it was a picture to see him walk through the grain. All work seemed play to him. He had no vices any more than nature has, and his beloved by all who knew him. I have written thus to you about him, for such young men belong to you. He was of your kind. I wish you could have known him. He had the sweetness of a child, and the strength and courage and readiness of a young viking, his mother and father are poor. They have a rough hard farm. His mother works in the field with her husband when the work presses. She has had twelve children. February 7, 1878. Listening sun today, with slight haze, warm enough and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in my country retreat, under an old cedar. For two hours I have been idly wandering around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking out choice spots to sit awhile, then up and slowly on again, all is peace here. Of course, none of the summer noises are vitality today, hardly even the winter ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice in recitations and in ringing the changes on all the vocal and alphabetical sounds, not even an echo, only the cawing of a solitary crow flying at some distance. The pond is one bright, flat spread without a ripple, a vast, clodlering glass in which I study the sky, the light, the leafless trees, and an occasional crow with flapping wings flying overhead. The brown fields have a few white patches of snow left. February 9, after an hour's ramble, now retreating, resting, sitting close by the pond in a warm nook, writing this, sheltered from the breeze just before noon, the emotional aspects and influence of nature. I too, like the rest, feel these modern tendency from all the prevailing intellectuals, literature and poems, to turn everything to pathos, NY, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yet how clear it is to me that those are not the born results, influences of nature at all, but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul, here amid the wild, free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean and vigorous and sweet. Mid-afternoon, one of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I am sitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from the wind. Near me are the cattle feeding on corn stalks, occasionally a cow, or the young bull, how handsome and bold he is, scratches and munches the far end of the log on which I sit. The fresh, milky odor is quite perceptible, also the perfume of hay from the barn. The perpetual rustle of dry corn stalks, the low sow of the wind, round the barn, gables and the grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of a locomotive, and occasional crowing of shanticleers are the sounds. February 19, cold and sharp last night, clear and not too much wind, the full moon shining in a fine spread of constellations and little and big stars, serious very bright, rising early, proceeding by many orb doryon, glittering vasts sordid and chasing with his dog, the earth heart frozen and a stiff glare of ice over the pond. Shattered by the calm splendor of the night, I attempted a short walk, but was driven back by the cold, too severe for me, also at nine o'clock, when I came out this morning. So I turned back again, but now, near noon, I have walked down the lane, basking all the way in the sun. This farm has a pleasant southerly exposure, and here I am, seated under the lee of a bank, close by the water. There are blue birds already flying about, and I hear much chirping and twittering, and two or three real songs, sustained quite a while in the midday brilliance and warmth. There, that is the true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if the singer meant it. Then, as the noon strengthens, the reedy trail of the robin, to my ears the most cheerful of bird-notes. That intervals, like bars and breaks, out of the low murmur that in any sense, however quiet, is never entirely absent to a delicate ear. The occasional crunch and cracking of the ice glare congealed over the creek as it gives way to the sunbeams, sometimes with low sigh, sometimes with indignant, obstinate, tug and snort. That burn, says in one of his letters, there is scarcely any earthly object gives me more. I do not know if I should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me, than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. It is my best season of devotion. Some of his most characteristic poems were composed in such scenes and seasons. A Meadowlark March 16 Fine clear dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the air just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receives from the song of that meadowlark perched on a fenced stake, twenty rides distance, two or three liquid simple notes repeated intervals, full of careless happiness and hope. With its peculiar shimmering slow progress and rapid noiseless action of the wings, it flies on away, lights on another stake, and so on to another, shimmering and singing many minutes. Sun Down Lights May 6, 5 p.m. This is the hour for strange effects in light and shade, enough to make a colorist go delirious, long spokes of molten silver scent horizontally through the trees, now in their brightest tenderest green, each leaf and branch of endless foliage, a lit up miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful ripe, interminable grass, and giving the blades not only aggregate but individual splendor, in ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spots where I get these effect in their perfection. One broad splash lies on the water with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidly deepening black-green murky transparent shadows behind, and at intervals all along the bank. These, with great shafts of horizontal fire thrown among the trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, give effects more and more peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly, rich and dazzling. Thoughts Under an Oak A Dream June 2 This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind and rain. Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now entered on my sixtieth year. Every day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a waterproof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond and ensconce myself under the lee of the Great Oak. I am here now writing these lines. The dark smoke-colored clouds roll in furious silence, afford the sky. The soft green leaves dangle all around me. The wind steadily keeps up its horse, soothing music over my head. Nature's mighty whisper, seated here in solitude, I have been musing over my life, connecting events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly or cheerily, but somehow, today, here, under the oak, in the rain, in an unusually matter-of-fact spirit. But my Great Oak, sturdy, vital, green, five feet thick at the butt, I sick a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree nearby, the Apollo of the woods, tall and graceful yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing out of limb, as if the beauties, real leafy creature could walk if it only would. I had a sort of dream-trans the other day, in which I saw my favorite tree step out in promenade up, down, and around, very curiously, with a whisper from one, leaning down as he passed me. We do all this, on the present occasion, exceptionally just for you. Clover and Hape Perfume, July 3, 4, 5. Here, hot, favorable weather has been a good summer. The growth of clover and grass now generally mowed. The familiar, delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along, you see the fields of grayish, white, slightly tinged with yellow. The loosely stacked grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers in the fields with stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn is about to tassle. All over the middle and southern states, the spear-shaped battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting, long, glossy, dark-green plumes for the great horsemen. Earth, I hear the cheery notes of my old acquaintance Tommy Quail, but too late for the whipper-will. Though I heard one solitary lingerer night before last, I watched the broad majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes high up, sometimes low enough to see the lines of his form, even his spread quills in relief against the sky. Once or twice lately, I have seen an eagle here at early candlelight, flying low. An Unknown, June 15, today I noticed a new large bird, size of a nearly grown hen, a haughty, white-bodied, dark-winged hawk. I suppose a hawk from his bell and general look, only he had a clear, loud, quite musical sort of bell-like call, which he repeated again and again at intervals, from a lofty, dead treetop overhanging the water, sat there a long time and eye on the opposite bank watching him. When he darted down, skimming pretty close to the stream, rose slowly, a magnificent sight, and sailed with steady, wide-spread wings, no flapping at all, up and down the pond two or three times, near me, in circles and clear sight, for, if for my delectation, once he became quite close over my head, I saw plainly his hooked bill and hard, restless eyes. Bird Whistling, how much music, wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart sweet, there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance of birds. There are all sorts and styles. For the last half hour now, while I have been sitting here, some feathered fellow away off in the bushes has been repeating over and over again what I may call a kind of throbbing whistle, and now a bird about the robin size has just appeared, all mulberry red, flitting among the bushes, head, wings, body, deep red, not very bright, no song as I have heard. Four o'clock. There is a real concert going on around me, a dozen different birds pitching in with will. There have been occasional rains, and the growth all shows its vivifying influences. As I finish this, seated on a log, close by the pond edge, much chirping and trilling in the distance, and a feathered recluse in the woods nearby is singing deliciously, not many notes, but full of music of almost human sympathy continuing for a long, long while. A Horseman, August 22nd, not a human being and hardly the evidence of one in sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling to the chromatic tones of fretful cat birds somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk, hither two hours since, through the fields in the old lane, I stop to view, now the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards. What a contrast from New York or Philadelphia streets. Everywhere great patches of dingy-blossomed horse-mint, wafting a spicy odor through the air, especially evenings, everywhere the flowering bonnet set and the rose bloom of the wild bean. Three of us. July 14th, my two kingfisher still haunt the pond, in the bright sun and breeze and perfect temperature of today, noon, I am sitting here by one of the gurgling brooks, dipping a French water pen in the limpid crystal, and using it to write these lines. Again, watching the feather twain as they fly and sport a thwart the water, so close, almost touching into its surface. Indeed, there seem to be three of us. For nearly an hour, I indolently look and join them while they dart and turn and take their airy gambles, sometimes far up the creek, disappearing for a few moments, and then surely returning again and performing most of their flight within sight of me, as if they knew I appreciated and absorbed their vitality, spirituality, faithfulness, and the rapid, vanishing, delicate lines of moving yet quiet electricity they draw for me across the spread of the grass, the trees, and the blue sky, while the brook babbles and the shadows of the boughs dapple in the sunshine around me, and the cool west by northwest wind faintly sows the thick bushes and treetops. Among the objects of beauty and interest now beginning to appear quite plentifully in this secluded spot, I noticed the hummingbird, the dragonfly with its wings of slate-colored gauze, and many varieties of beautiful and plain butterflies idly flapping among the plants and wild posies. The mullion has shot up out of its nest of broad leaves to a tall stalk, towering sometimes five or six feet high, now studded with the knobs of golden blossoms. The milkweed, I see a great, gorgeous creature of gamboge and black lightning on one as I write, is in flower with its delicate red fringe, and there are perfused clusters of feathery blossom waving in the wind on tapered stems. I see lots of these in much else in every direction as I saunter sit. For the last half hour a bird has persistently kept up a simple, sweet, melodious song from the bushes. I have a positive conviction that some of these birds sing and others fly and flirt about here for my special benefit. Death of William Cullen Bryant, New York City, came from West Philadelphia, June 13, in the 2 p.m. train to Jersey City, and so across to my friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. J. and their large house, large family, and large hearts, amid which I feel at home, at peace, away up on Fifth Avenue, near 86th Street, quiet, breezy, overlooking the dense, woody fridge of the park. Plenty of space and sky, birds chirping in air, comparatively fresh and odorless. Two hours before starting, saw the announcement of William Cullen Bryant's funeral and felt a strong desire to attend. I had known Mr. Bryant over thirty years, and he had been markedly kind to me. Off and on, all along that time for years, as they passed, we met and chatted together. I thought him very sociable in his way, and a man to become attached to. We were both walkers, and when I worked in Brooklyn, he several times came over, middle of the afternoon, and we took rambles miles long till dark, out towards Bedford or Flatbush in company. On these occasions, he gave me clear accounts of scenes in Europe, the city's looks, architecture, art, especially Italy, where he had traveled a good deal. June 14, the funeral. And so, the good, stainless, noble old citizen and poet lies in the close coffin there, and this is his funeral. A solemn, impressive, simple scene to spirit and senses, the remarkable gathering of gray heads, celebrities, the finely rendered anthem, and other music, the church, dem even now at approaching noon, in its light from the mellow stained windows, the pronounced eulogy on the bard who loved nature so fondly and sung so well her shows and seasons, ending with these appropriate well-known lines. I gazed upon the glorious sky and the green mountains round, and thought that when I came to lie at rest within the ground, per pleasant that in flowery June, when brooks send up a joyous tune and groves a cheerful sound, the sexton's hand, my grave to mark, the rich green mountain's turf should break. of section 10. Reading by Belinda Brown of Indianapolis, Indiana. June 20th. On the merry Powell enjoyed everything beyond precedent. The delicious tender summer day, just warm enough, the constantly changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the river went up near a hundred miles, the high, straight walls of the stony palisades, beautiful yonkers, and beautiful Irvington. The never-ending hills, mostly in rounded lines, swathed with vendour, the distant turns like great shoulders in blue veils, the frequent gray and brown of the tall rising rocks, the river itself, now narrowing, now expanding. The white sails of the many sloops, yachts, and sea, some near, some in the distance, the rapid succession of handsome villages and cities, our boat is a swift traveler and makes few stops. The race, picturesque West Point, and indeed, all along, the costly and often-turreted mansions forever showing in some cheery light color through the woods make up the scene. Happiness and Raspberries June 21 Here I am on the West Bank of the Hudson, 80 miles north of New York, near Esepus, at the handsome, roomy, honeysuckle and rose-enboured cottage of John Burroughs. The place, the perfect June days and nights, leaning toward crisp and cool, the hospitality of J. and Mrs. B., the air, the fruit, especially my favorite dish, currants and raspberries, mixed sugared, fresh and ripe from the bushes. I pick them myself, the room I occupy at night, the perfect bed, the window giving an ample view of the Hudson and the opposite shores, so wonderful toward sunset, and the rolling music of the R.R. trains far over there. The peaceful rest, the early Venus-heralded dawn, the noiseless splash of sunrise, the light and warmth indescribably glorious in which, soon as the sun is well up. I have a capital rubbing and rasping with the flesh-brush, with an extra scour on the back by Al Jay, who is here with us all in spiriting my invalid frame with new life for the day. Then after some whiffs of morning air, the delicious coffee of Mrs. B., with the cream, strawberries, and many substantial for breakfast, a specimen tramp family, June 22. This afternoon, we went out, J.B., Al, and I, on quite a drive around the country, the scenery, the perpetual stone fences, some venerable old fellows dark-spotted with lichens, the many fine locust trees, the runs of brawling water, often over descendants of rock, these and lots else. It is lucky the roads are first-rate here, as they are, for it is up or down, hill, everywhere, and sometimes steep enough. B. has a tip-top horse, strong, young, and both gentle and fast. There is a great deal of wasteland and hills on the river edge of Ulster County, with a wonderful luxuriance of wildflowers and bushes. And it seems to me I never saw more vitality of trees, eloquent hemlocks, plenty of locusts, and fine maples and the balm of Gilead giving out aroma. In the fields and along the roadsides, unusual crops of the tall-stemmed wild daisy, white as milk and yellow as gold. We passed quite a number of tramps, singly or in couples, one squad, a family in a rickety one-horse wagon, with some baskets evidently their work and trade. The man seated on a low board in front, driving, the gauntish woman by his side with a baby well bundled in her arms its little red feet and lower legs sticking out right towards us as we passed. And in the wagon behind we saw two or three crouching little children. It was a queer-taking, rather sad picture. If I had been alone and on foot, I should have stopped and held confab. But on our return nearly two hours afterward we found them a ways further along, the same road in a lonesome open spot, hauled aside, unhitched and evidently going to camp for the night. The freed horse was not far off, quietly cropping the grass. The man was busy at the wagon, the boy had gathered some dry wood and was making a fire. And as we went a little further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her face in its great sun bonnet, but somehow her figure and gate told misery, terror, destitution. She had the rag bundled half-starved infant still in her arms, and in her hands held two or three baskets which she had evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little barefoot five-year-old girl-child with fine eyes trotted behind her clutching her gown. We stopped asking about the baskets which we bought. As we paid the money she kept her face hidden in the recesses of her bonnet. Then as we started and stopped again, Al, whose sympathies were evidently aroused, went back to the camping group to get another basket. He caught a look of her face and talked with her a little. Eyes, voice, and manner were those of a corpse animated by electricity. She was quite young, the man she was traveling with middle-aged. Poor woman, what story was it out of her fortunes to account for that inexpressibly scared way, those glassy eyes and that hollow voice? Manhattan from the Bay, June 25, returned to New York last night. Out today on the waters for a sail in the wide bay southeast of Staten Island, a rough tossing ride and a free sight, the long stretch of sandy hook, the highlands of Navasink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound. We came up through the midst of all in the full sun. I especially enjoyed the last hour or two. A moderate sea breeze had set in, yet over the city and the water's adjacent was a thin haze concealing nothing, only adding to the beauty. From my point of view as I ride amid the soft breeze, with a sea temperature surely nothing on earth of its kind can go beyond this show. To the left the North River, with its far vista nearer, three or four warships anchored peacefully. The Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue lost in the distance to the right, the East River, the massed hemmed shores, the grand obelisk-like towers of the bridge, one on either side in haze yet plainly defined. Giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful interlinking loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current below. The tide is just changing to its ebb. The broad water spread everywhere, crowded, no not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky with all sorts of sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferry boats, arriving and departing coasters, great ocean dons, iron black, modern, magnificent in size and power, filled with their incalculable value of human life and precious merchandise. With here and there, above all, those daring, careening things of grace and wonder, those white and shaded, swift, darting fish-birds, I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvive them, ever with their slanting spars and fierce, pure, hawk-like beauty and motion. First-class New York sloop or schooner yachts sailing this fine day, the free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the midst, tall-topped, ship-hemmed, modern American, yet strangely oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its spires, its cloud-touching edifices grouped at the center. The green of the trees and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture, well-blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heaven above, and June haze on the surface below. Human and Heroic New York The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn will not the time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one and named Manhattan. What I may call the human interior and exterior of these great seething oceanic populations as I get it in this visit is, to me, best of all. After an absence of many years, I went away at the outbreak of the Secession War and have never been back to stay since. Again, I resumed with curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knew so well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, Democratic Bowery. Human appearances and manners, as seen in all these and along the wharves and in the perpetual travel of the horse carts, or the crowded excursion steamers, or in wall and Nassau streets, by day, in the places of amusement, at night, bubbling and whirling and moving like its own environment of waters. Endless humanity in all phases, Brooklyn also taken in for the last three weeks. No need to specify minutely enough to say that making all allowances for the shadows and side streaks of a million headed city, the brief total of the impressions, the human qualities of these vast cities is, to me, comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combination of reticence and self-possession with good nature and friendliness, a prevailing range of according manners, taste, and intellect, surely beyond any elsewhere upon earth. And a palpable outcropping of that personal comradship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest future hold of this many-items union are not only constantly visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average. Today, I should say, defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions, and appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of successful democracy and of the solution of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed individual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, laymen sick pondering for years on many a doubt and danger for this Republic of ours, fully aware of all that can be said on the other side. I find in this visit to New York and the daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken, the grandest physical habitat and surroundings of land and water, the globe affords namely Manhattan Island and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city, city of superb democracy amid superb surroundings. Hours for the soul. July 22, 1878. Living down in the country again. A wonderful conjunction of all that goes to make those some time miracle hours after sunset so near and yet so far. Perfect or nearly perfect days, I notice are not so very uncommon, but the combinations that make perfect nights are few even in a lifetime. We have one of those perfections tonight. Sunset left things pretty clear, the larger stars were visible soon as the shades allowed. A while after eight, three or four great black clouds suddenly rose seemingly from different points and sweeping with broad swirls of wind but no thunder underspread the orbs from view everywhere and indicated a violent heat storm. But without storm clouds, blackness and all sped and vanished as suddenly as they had risen and from a little after nine till eleven the atmosphere and the whole show above were in that state of exceptional clearness and glory just alluded to. In the northwest turned the great dipper with its pointers around the Cinejur. A little south of east the constellation of the scorpion was fully up with red antares glowing in its neck while dominating majestic Jupiter's swam an hour and a half risen in the east no moon till after eleven. A large part of the sky seemed just laid in great splashes of phosphorus. You could look deeper in farther through than usual the orbs thick as heads of wheat in a field. Not that there was any special brilliancy either, nothing near as sharp as I have seen of keen winter nights but a curious general luminousness throughout to sight, sense and soul. The latter had much to do with it. I am convinced there are hours of nature especially of the atmosphere, mornings and evenings. Addressed to the soul night transcends for that purpose what the proudest day can do. Now indeed if never before the heavens declared the glory of God. It was to the full sky of the Bible, of Arabia and of the prophets and of the oldest poems. There in abstraction and stillness I had gone off by myself to absorb the scene to have the spell unbroken, the copiousness, the removeness, vitality, loose clear crowdedness of that stellar concave spreading overhead softly absorbing into me, rising so free, intermittently high, stretching east west, north, south and I, though but a point in the center below, embodying all. As it for the first time indeed creation noiselessly sank into and through me its placid and untellable lesson beyond. Oh so infinitely beyond. Anything from art, books, sermons or from science old or new. The spirits hour, religions hour, the visible suggestion of God in space and time now once definitely indicated if never again. The untold pointed at the heavens all paved with it. The milky way as if some superhuman symphony, some ode of universal vagueness, disdaining syllable and sound, a flashing glance of deity addressed to the soul. All silently the indescribable night and stars far off and silently. The dawn July 23. This morning between one and two hours before sunrise a spectacle wrought on the same background yet of quite different beauty and meaning. The moon well up in the heavens and past her half is shining brightly the air and sky of that cynical clear manurval like quality, virgin cool not the weight of sentiment or mystery or passions ecstasy indefinable, not the religious sense, the varied all distilled and sublimated into one of the night just described. Every star now clear cut showing for just what it is there in the colorless ether. The character of the heralded morning ineffably sweet and fresh and limpid, but for the aesthetic sense alone and for purity without sentiment. I have itemized the night, but dare I attempt the cloud list on? What subtle tie is this between one's soul and the break of day alike and yet no two nights or morning shows ever exactly alike preceded by an immense star almost unearthly in its effusion of white splendor with two or three long unequal spoke rays of diamond radiance shedding down through the fresh morning air below an hour of this and then the sunrise. The East, what a subject for a poem. Indeed, where else a more pregnant, more splendid one? Where one more idealistic real, more subtle, more sensuous delicate? The East answering all lands, all ages, peoples. Touching all senses here, immediate, now, and yet so indescribably far off. Such retrospect. The East, long stretching, so losing itself, the Orient, the Gardens of Asia, the womb of history and song, forth issuing all those strange dim cavalcades. Flurid with blood, pensive, wrapped with musings, hot with passion. Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garment, with sunburnt visage, intense soul and glittering eyes. Always the East, old, how incalculably old, and yet here the same hours yet, fresh as a rose to every morning, every life, today, and always will be. September 17. Another presentation, same theme, just before sunrise again, a favorite hour with me. The clear gray sky, a faint glow in the dull, liver color of the East, the cool, fresh odor and the moisture, the cattle and horses off there grazing in the fields, the star Venus again, two hours high. For sounds the chirping of crickets in the grass, the clarion of shanticleer, and the distant calling of an early crow. Quietly over the dense fringe of cedars and pines rises that dazzling red, transparent disc of flame and the low sheets of white vapor roll and roll into disillusion. The Moon, May 18. I went to bed early last night, but found myself waked shortly after 12, and, turning a while sleepless and mentally feverish, I rose, dressed myself, sallied forth, and walked down the lane. The full moon summed three or four hours up a spring circle of light and less light clouds, just lazily moving, Jupiter, an hour high in the East and here and there throughout the heavens, a random star appearing and disappearing. So beautifully veiled and varied, the air with that early summer perfume, not at all damp or raw, at times Luna languidly emerging in richest brightness for minutes and then partially enveloped again. Far off a poor whipper-will plied his notes incessantly, it was that silent time between one and three. The rare nocturnal scene, how soon it soothed and pacified me. Is there not something about the moon some relation or reminder which no poem or literature has yet caught? In very old and primitive ballads I have come across lines or asides that suggest it. After a while the clouds mostly cleared, and as the moon swam on she carried shimmering and shifting, delicate color effects of paleucid green and tawny vapor. Let me conclude this part with an extract. Some writer in the Tribune, May 16, in 1878. No one ever gets tired of the moon. Goddess that she is by downer of her eternal beauty, she is a true woman, by her tact, knows the charm of being seldom seen, of coming by surprise and staying but a little while, never wears the same dress two nights running, nor, all night, the same way. Commence herself to the matter effect people by her usefulness and makes her uselessness adored by poets, artists, and all lovers in all lands, lends herself to every symbolism and to every emblem is Diana's bow and Venus's mirror and Mary's throne. Is a sickle a scarf an eyebrow, his face or her face, and looked at by her or by him is the mad man's hell, the poet's heaven, the baby's toy, the philosopher's study, and while her admirers follow her footsteps and hang on her lovely looks, she knows how to keep her woman's secret, her other side, unguessed and unguessable. Furthermore, February, 1918, just before 10 p.m., cold and entirely clear again, the show overhead bearing southwest of wonderful and crowded magnificence. The moon in her third quarter, the clusters of the hiades and Pleiades, with the planet Mars between in full crossing, sprawl in the sky, the great Egyptian ex, Ceres, Procyon, and the main stars in the constellations of the ship, the dove, and of Orion. Just north of east, Bootes, and in his knee, Arcturus, an hour high, mounting the heaven, ambitiously large and sparkling as if he meant to challenge with Sirius the stellar supremacy. With the sentiment of the stars and moon, such nights I get all the free margins and indefiniteness of music or poetry fused in geometry's utmost exactness. Straw-colored and other psyches, August 4, a pretty sight, where I sit in the shade a warm day, the sun shining from cloudless skies, the forenoon well advanced, I look over a ten acre field of luxuriant clover hay, the second crop, the livid ripe red blossoms and dabs of August, brown thickly spotting the prevailing dark green. Overall flutter myriads of light yellow butterflies, mostly skimming along the surface, dipping and oscillating, giving a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful spiritual insects, straw-colored psyches. Occasionally one of them leaves his mates and mounts, perhaps spirally, perhaps in a straight line in the air, fluttering up up to literally out of sight. In the lane, as I came along just now, I noticed one spot, ten feet square or so, where more than a hundred had collected, holding a revel, a gyration dance, or butterfly good time, winding and circling down and across, but always keeping within the limits. The little creatures have come out all of a sudden the last few days, and are now very plentiful. As I sit outdoors or walk, I hardly look around without somewhere seeing two, always two, fluttering through the air in amorous dalliance. Then there, in a mintable color, their fragility, peculiar motion in that strange, frequent way of one leaving the crowd and mounting up up in the free ether and apparently never returning. As I look over the field, these yellow wings everywhere, mildly sparkling, many snowy blossoms of the wild carrot, gracefully bending on their tall and tapered stems, wild for sounds, the distant guttural screech of a flock of guinea hens comes shrilly yet somehow musically to my ears. And now a faint growl of heat thunder in the north and ever the low rising and falling wind per from the tops of the maples and willows. August 20. Butterflies and butterflies taking the place of the bumblebees of three months since who have quite disappeared continue to flip to and fro all sorts white, yellow, brown, purple, now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists' palettes dabbed with every color. Over the breast of the pond, I noticed many white ones crossing pursuing their idle capricious flight near where I sit grows a tall stemmed weed topped with a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time. By and by a hummingbird visits the same and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and shimmering about. These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of the August foliage which have had some copious rains lately and over the glistening bronze of the pond surface. You contain even such insects, I have one big and handsome moth down here nose and comes to me likes me to hold him up on my extended hand. Another day later a grand twelve acre field of ripe cabbages with their prevailing hue of malachite green and floating flying over and among them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies. As I came up the lane today, I saw a living globe of the same two or three feet in diameter. Many scores clustered together and rolling along in the air adhering to their ball shape six or eight feet above the ground. A night remembrance, August twenty three, nine to ten a.m. I sit by the pond, everything quiet, the broad polished surface spread before me the blue of the heavens and the white clouds reflected from it and flitting across now and then the reflection of some flying bird. Last night I was down here with a friend till after midnight, everything a miracle of splendor, the glory of the stars and the completely rounded moon, the passing clouds, silver and luminous tawny now and then masses of vapory illuminated scud and silently by my side my dear friend. The shades of the trees and patches of moonlight on the grass, the softly blowing breeze and just palpable odor of the neighboring ripening corn, the indolent and spiritual night, inexpressibly rich, tender, suggestive, something altogether to filter through one's soul and nourish and feed and soothe the memory long afterwards. Wildflowers. This has been and is yet a great season for wildflowers. Oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water runlets, grow all along the old fences and are scattered in profusion over the fields. An eight-pedaled blossom of gold-yellow, clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle nearly as large as a silver half-dollar is very common. Yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed covered with blue flowers, the blue of the old Chinese tea cups, treasured by our great aunts I am continually stopping to admire. A little larger than a dime and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken of also the fragrant life everlasting. But there are all hues and beauties especially on the frequent tracks of half-opened scrub oak and dwarf cedar hereabout, wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding the frost touch, the hearty little chaps maintain themselves in all their bloom. The tree leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turn yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine color of the sumax and gum tree is already visible and the straw color of the dogwood and beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms and friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season or another in my walks. Wild azalea, dandelions, wild honeysuckle, yarrow, wild roses, choreopsis, goldenrod, wild pea, larkspur, woodbine, early crocus, elderberry, sweet flag, great patches of it, pokeweed, creeper, trumpet flower, sunflower, scented marjoram, chamomile, snake root, violets, Solomon's seal, clematis, sweet balm, blood root, mint, great plenty, swamp magnolia, wild geranium, milkweed, wild heliotrope, wild daisy, plenty, burdock, wild chrysanthemum.