JOURNAL DRIPPINGS

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 1

Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

October 2007

***********************************************************

By Way of Introduction:

Welcome to the 9th year of Journal Drippings. For those new to this monthly
Thoreau e-mail digest, here is some background: I began this project in 1997, and it represents my attempt to explore and share the sunrise mind of Henry David Thoreau, as reflected in his 14-volume, 7000+ page journal. I have now passed the halfway point of this journey, with about 2,000 pages to go. I have omitted the more familiar aphorisms and memorable lines that later found their way into his better-known essays or into his masterpiece Walden. Here is the Thoreau you may not have met. Enjoy!....& please pass this on to others who might be interested. The Journal Drippings archive can be found through the links listed below.

I pick up the thread where I left it last June.

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." –HD

*******************************************************

[Describes the bare fields of late winter]: “But let a blue bird come and warble over them, and what a change!” (March 18, 1858)

****************

I was not aware that the capacity to hear the woodpecker has slumbered within me so long. (Same)

****************

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that that the associations are always pleasing, never saddening: reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging. (Same)

****************

[On pine trees waving over the forest]: “…They are alternately light and dark, like looms above the forest, when the shuttle is thrown between the light woof and the dark web, weaving a light article,–spring goods for Nature to wear. (Same)

****************

I sit on the cliff and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk, but I never played on its common nor read the epitaphs in its graveyard, and many strangers to me dwell there. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight! We see beyond our ordinary walks and thoughts. With a glass I might perchance read the time on its clock. How circumscribed are our walks, after all! With the utmost industry we cannot expect to know well an area more than six miles square, and yet we pretend to be travelers, to be acquainted with Siberia and Africa. (Same)

****************

The other day the face off the meadow wore a particular appearance, as if it were beginning to wake up under the influence of southwestern wind and the warm sun…(March 19)

****************

By the river, see distinctly red wings, and hear their conqueree. They are not associated with grackles…They are officers, epauletted; the others are rank and file. (Same)

****************

I feel reproach when I have spoken with levity, when I have made jest of my own existence. The makers have thus secured seriousness and respect for their work in our very organization. The most serious events have their ludicrous aspect such as death. …It is pardonable when we spurn the proprieties, even the sanctities, making them stepping- stones to something higher. (Same).

****************

[He speculates about willow catkins]: “Is this not perhaps the earliest, most obvious, awakening of vegetable life?” (March 20)

****************

He finds and old fishing creel made of willows and reflects…]: “…I have no doubt that the Indians used something like this. How much more we would have learned of the aborigines if they had not been so reserved! Suppose they had generally become the laboring class among the whites, that my father had been a farmer, and had an Indian as his hired man, how many aboriginal ways we children should have learned from them! It was very pleasant to walk with this kind of textile or basket in our walk, to know that some had the leisure for other things than farming and town meeting, and that they had felt the spring influences in their way. That man was not fitting for the State prison when he was weaving that creel. He was meditating a small poem in his way. It was equal to a successful stanza whose subject was spring.” (Same)

*********************************************************************************************

“His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they
were not meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most
others they would only give false impressions. I have never been able to
understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being
a writer? Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc?
Why was he so much interested in the river
and the woods and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
or go to :
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm

or to:The Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

*********
For L-S Alumni
LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html

**********
To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

*****************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX No. 2

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

November 2007

************************************************

Note:

Congratulations to Peter Thomson, LS ’77, on the publication of his book
Sacred Sea, by Oxford University Press. The book, which has received fine reviews,
relates the story of his journey to Russia’s mystical, still pure Lake Baikal. Please buy
a copy. You’ll be glad you did.

********************************

The fishes are going up the brooks as they open. They are dispersing themselves through the fields and woods, imparting new life into them....Spring-aroused fishes are running up our veins too. Little fishes are seeking the sources of their brooks, seeking to disseminate their principles. Talk about a revival of religion! And businessmen's prayer meetings! Which all over the country goes mad now! What if it were as true and wholesome a revival as the little fish feel which come out of the sluggish waters and run up the brooks to their sources. . All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new life, but with these churchgoers, it is only a revival of religion or hypocrisy. They go downstream to still muddier waters…Do the fishes stay to hold prayer-meeting with us in Fair Haven Bay, while some monstrous pike gulps them down? (March 20, 1858)

***********

No wonder we feel the spring influences. There is a motion in the very ground under our feet. Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it...If a man does not revive with nature in the spring how shall he revive when a white collared priest prays for him? (Same)

**********

How important the hemlock amid the pines, for its darker and wilder green. (Same)

**********

We too are out obeying the same law with all nature. No less important are the observers of the birds than the birds themselves. (Same)

**********
In order that a house and grounds be picturesque and interesting in the highest degree, they must suggest the idea of necessity, proving the devotion of the builder, not of luxury. We need to see the honest and naked life here and there protruding…The gentleman whose purse is full, who can meet all demands, though he employs the most famous artists, can never make a very interesting seat [house…estate]. He does not carve from near enough near the bone. No man is rich enough to keep a poet in his pay.
(Same)

**********
You might frequently say of a poet away from home that he was as mute as a bird of passage, uttering a mere chip from time to time, but follow him to his true habitat, and you shall know him, he will sing so melodiously. (March 17)

**********

It is surprising that men can be divided into those who lead an indoor and those who lead an outdoor life…How many of our problems are house-bred! (March 28)

**********

From this hill-top I overlook, again bare of snow, on a warm, hazy smiling face, this seemingly concave circle of earth in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it, as if it were of more costly manufacture. On ascending the hill next to his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. (Same)

**********

[He observes what he thinks may be an eagle soaring): “This lofty soaring is at least as grand a recreation as if it were nourishing sublime ideas. I would like to know why it soars higher and higher so, whether its thoughts are really turned to the earth, for it seems to be more nobly as well as highly employed that the laborers ditching in the meadows beneath or any other of my fellow townsmen.” (March 29)

**********

In the wood-paths now I see many small red butterflies. I am not sure what species…The earliest butterflies seem to be born of dry leaves on the forest floor. (Same)

**********

At Hemlock Brook, a dozen or more rods from the river, I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year. It does not open its eyes or mouth while I hold it. Its eyes appear sealed up by its long sleep. In our ability to content with the elements what feeble infants we are to this one. Talk of great heads, look at this one! Talk of Hercules' feats in the cradle, what sort of cradle and nursing has this infant had? It totters forth confident and victorious when it can hardly carry its shield. It looks so much like the mud or wet muddy leaf, it was a wonder I saw it. (April 1)

**********

Who will believe that these dry and withered banks will come viole, lupine, etc, in profusion? (April 2)

**********

Approaching the side of a wood, on which were some pines, this afternoon I heard the note of a pine warbler calling the pines to life…. (Same)

**********

[On hearing the first spring notes of the purple finch]: “[There is] probably not another than myself in all the town observes their coming, and not a half dozen ever distinguished them in their lives. Yet the very mob of the town know the hard name of Germanians [sic] or Swiss families which once sang here or elsewhere.” (April 3)

**********

The gregariousness of men is their most contemptible and discouraging aspect. See how they follow each other like sheep, not knowing why….They have not a good reason for proffering this or that-religion as in this case even…Men are the inveterate foes of all improvement. Generally speaking, they speak more of their hen-houses than of any desirable heaven. If you aspire to anything better than politics, expect no cooperation from men. They will not further anything good. You must prevail of your own force, as a plant springs and grows by its own vitality. (Same)

**********

I doubt if we very simply and naturally glorify God in the ordinary sense, but it is remarkable how sincerely in all ages they glorify nature. The praising of Aurora, for instance, under some form in all ages is obedience to as irresistible an instinct as that which impels the frog to peep. (April 9)

**********

The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience, more perhaps than by activity. He must take his position, and then wait and watch. (April 15)

**********

Frogs are strange creatures. One would describe them as particularly wary and timid, another as equally bold and imperturbable…You conquer them by superior patience, not by quickness, not by heat but by coldness. (April 18)

**********

Spent the day hunting for my boat which was stolen. (April 19)

*************************************************************

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

or go to:
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm

or to:
the Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

*********

For L-S Alumni
LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html

**********
To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

**************************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 3

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

December 2007

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

…{T]his warm and still afternoon, I hear a voice calling to the oxen three-quarters of a mile, and I know it to be Elijah Wood. It is wonderful how far the individual proclaims himself. Out of the thousand millions human beings on this Globe, I know that this sound was made by the lungs and larynx and lips of E. Wood, and am as sure as if he had nudged me and shouted in my ear. He can impress himself on the very atmosphere, then, can launch himself a mile on the wind, through trees and rustling sedge and rippling water, associating with myriad sounds, and yet arrive distinct in my ear; and yet this creature that is felt so far, that was so noticeable, lives but a short time, quietly dies and makes no more noise that I know of. I can tell him too, with my eyes, by the very gait and motion of him half a mile distant. Far more wonderful his purely spiritual influence-–, that after the lapse of thousands of years you my still detect the individual in the turn of a sentence or the tone of a thought!! E. Wood has a peculiar way of modulating the air, imparts to it peculiar vibrations. However E. Wood is not a match for a little peeping hylodes in this respect, and there is no peculiar divinity in this. (May 1, 1858)

****************

It is a perfect frog and toad day. (Same)

****************

[On the deep sound of a humble bee]: “But no sound so brings round the summer again. It is like the Drum of May training. This reminds me that men and boys and the most enlightened communities still love to march after the beating of drum, as do the most aboriginal of savages.” (Same)

****************

Hear of a peach [tree] out in Lincoln. (May 3)

****************

To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is to go some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. (May 4)

****************

It is a muggy and louring afternoon, and I go looking for toad spawn and for frogs.
(May 6)

****************

The thinker, he who is serene and self-possessed, is the brave, not the desperate soldier. He who can deal with his thoughts as a material, building them into poems in which future generations will delight, he is the man of the greatest and rarest vigor, not sturdy diggers or lusty polygamists. He is the man of energy in whom subtle and poetic thoughts are bred. (Same)

****************

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. (Same)

****************

What is all your building, if you do not build with thought?...You conquer fate with thought. If you think a fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow. There is no more Herculean task that to think a thought about this life, and then get it expressed. (Same)

****************

A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself. (May 9)

****************

[On a toad]: “He swears by the power of mud.” (May 10)

****************

[On the trumping of frogs]: “It is a certain revelation and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten…Our climate is now as tropical as any. It says, Put out your fires and sit in the fire which the sun has kindled. I hear…the half-sounded trump of a bullfrog this warm morning. It is like the tap of a drum when human legions are mustering. It reminds me that summer is now in earnest mustering her forces, and that ere long I shall see their waving plumes and glancing armor and hear the full bands and steady tread. The bullfrog is the earth’s trumpeter and the head of the terrene band. He replies to the sky with answering thunder. (Same)

****************

The warbling vireo cheers the elms with a strain for which they must have pined …Toward night [the] wood thrush ennobles the wood and the world with his strain. (Same)

****************

Saw some unusually broad chestnut planks, just sawed at the mill. Barrett says they came from Lincoln… (May 12)

****************

The rain is good for thought. It is especially agreeable to me as I enter the wood and hear the soothing dripping on the leaves. It domiciliates me in nature. The woods are more like a house for the rain…the very trees seem still and passive. The clouds are but a higher roof. (May 17)

****************

You are more than paid for a wet coat and feet, not only by the exhilaration, that the fertile moist air imparts, but by the increased fragrance and more gem-like character of expanded buds and leafets in the rain. All vegetation is now fuller of life and expression, somewhat like lichens in wet weather and the grass. Buds are set in syrup or amber. (Same)

****************

I thought yesterday that the view the of mountains from the bare hill on the Lincoln-side of Flint’s Pond was very grand…And I reflected what kind of life must be lived always in sight of them. I looked round at the windows in the middle of Lincoln and considered that such was the privilege of the inhabitants of these chambers, but their blinds were closed, and I have but little doubt that they are blind to the to the beauty and sublimity of this prospect. I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain range. They are a constant elevating influence. (Same)

****************

It is remarkable how little way most men get in their account of the mysteries of nature. Puffer, after describing the habits of a snake or turtle–some peculiarity which struck him in its behavior,–would say with a remarkable air as if he were communicating or suggesting something, possibly explaining something, “Now I take it that is nature; Nature did that.” (Same)

**********************************************************************

“His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most
others they would only give false impressions. I have never been
able to understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care
so much about being a writer? Why did he pay so much
attention to his own thoughts? Why was he so
dissatisfied with everyone else, etc?
Why was he so much interested
in the river and the woods
and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********
“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover
what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with
me. I have lain fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********
“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

*********
For L-S Alumni
LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html

**********
To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

**************************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 4

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

January 2008

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

Could this bird have made the sound heard on the 15th? (May 19, 1858)

**************

After this May storm, the sun bursts forth and is reflected brightly in some placid hour from the new leaves of the lily spread on the surface of the ponds and pools raised [by] the rain, and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer. (May 22)

***************

Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? I think it is much less sonorous and ringing, a more croaking and inquisitive or qui vivre sound. Is it not less pronounced too? (May 31)

***************

Almost without interruption we had the mountain in sight before us – its sublime grey mass - that antique brownish-grey Ararat color. Probably the crests of the earth are for the most part of one color in all lands, that grey color of antiquity which nature loves; color of an unpainted wood, weather-satin, time stain; not glaring or gaudy; the color of all roofs, the color of things that endure, the color that wears well; color of Egyptian ruins, of mummies. Of all antiquity baked in the sun, done brown. Methought I saw the same color with which Ararat and Caucuses and all earth’s brows are stained, which was missed in antiquity and receive a new coat every century; not scarlet like the crest of the bragging cock, but that hard enduring grey, terrene sky-color, solidified air with a tinge of earth. (June 2)

***************

[On nighthawks heard while camping on a mountain-top]: “It was a thrumming of the mountain’s rock chords; strains from the music of Chaos, such as were heard when the earth was rent and these rocks heaved up…No sound could be more in harmony with the scenery.” (Same)

*******************

Before dawn, the nighthawks commenced their sounds again, and these sounds were as good as a clock to us, telling us how the night got on. (Same)

*******************
[While camping on Monadnock]: “This was our parlor and supper room; in another direction was our wash room.” (Same)

*******************

We thus had made a pretty complete survey of the top of the mountain. It often reminded me of my walks on the beach, and suggested how much both depend for their sublimity on solitude and dreariness. In both cases, we feel the presence of some vast titanic presence. (June 3)

*******************

In the valley or on the plain you do not commonly notice the shadow of a cloud unless you are in it, but on a mountain-top or on a lower elevation….the shadows of clouds flitting over the landscape are a never failing source of amusement. (Same)

********************

It is remarkable how, as you leaving a mountain and looking back at it, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression. (July 4)

********************

What a relief and expansion of my thoughts when I came out from that inland portion by the graveyard to the broad river shore! The vista was incredible there. Suddenly I see a broad reach of blue beneath, with its curves and headlands liberating me from the terrene earth. What a difference it makes whether I spend my four hours nooning between the hills by yonder roadside or on the brink of this fair river, within a quarter mile of that! Here the earth is fluid in my thoughts…the current allies me to all the world. Be careful to sit in an elevating and inspiring place. There my thoughts were confined and trivial, and I hid myself from the gaze of travelers. Here is something in the scenery of a broad river equivalent to culture and civilization. Its channel conducts our thoughts as well as our bodies to classic and famous ports; and allies us to all that is fair and great. (July 2)

*******************

[On the bank of the Merrimac]: “It is just wide enough to interrupt the land and lead my eye and thoughts down its channel to the sea. A river is superior to a lake, in its liberating influence. It has motion and indefinite length. A river touching the back of a town is like a wing, it may be unused as yet, but ready to waft it over the world…River towns are winged towns.” (Same)

*******************

The wood thrush sings almost everywhere I go, eternally re-consecrating the world, morning and evening, for us. (Same)

*******************

[Traveling by horse in N.H., he finds it harder to find good views, and envies walkers]: ”The only alternative is to spend your noon at some trivial inn, pestered by flies and tavern loungers.” (June 4)

*******************

The scenery in Conway and onward to North Conway is surprisingly grand. You are steadily advancing into an amphitheater of mountains. (July 6)

*******************

[In the following two passages, he is working on an image]: “When I looked up casually toward a crescent of snow [in the mountains]. I would mistake it for the sky, a white glowing sky or cloud, it was so high, while the dark earth on [the] mountainside above it passed for a dark cloud.” (July 8)

*******************

I was supposed to discover, looking down through the fir-tops, a large bright, downy fair-weather cloud covering the lower world far beneath us…The pure white crescent of snow was our sky, and the dark mountainside above, our permanent cloud.

**********************************************************************

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover
what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with
me. I have lain fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
or go to :
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm
or to:
the Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

**************************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 5

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal
The Adventure Continues!

February 2008

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

[While in the White Mts.]: “ After the sun set to us, the bare summits were of a delicate rosaceous color, passing through violet into the deep dark-blue or purple of the night which already invested their lower parts, for this night shadow was wonderfully blue, reminding us of the blue shadows on snow. There was an afterglow in which these tints and variations were repeated. It was the greatest mountain view I ever got.” (July 13, 1858)

****************

Cannon Mountain on the west side of Franconia Notch…is the most singular lumpish mass of any mountain I ever saw, especially so high. It looks like a behemoth or a load of hay… (July 15)

****************

In New Hampshire, there is a greater want of shade trees [than in Massachusetts], but long bleak or sunny roads from which there is no escape. What barbarians we are! The convenience of the traveler is very little consulted. He merely has the privilege of crossing someone’s farm by a particular narrow and maybe unpleasant path. The individual retains all other rights–as to trees and fruit, wash of the road, etc. On the other hand these should belong to mankind inalienably….I feel commonly as if I were condemned to drive through someone’s cow yard or huckleberry path by a narrow lane, and if I make a fire to boil my hasty pudding, the farmer comes running over to see if I am not burning up his stuff. You are barked along through the country, from door to door. (July 17)

****************

On these mountain summits, or near them, you find small and almost uninhabited ponds, apparently without fish, sources of rivers still and cold, strange as condensed clouds, weird-like,–of which nevertheless you make tea! (July 19)

****************

[He likes this passage]: “In the Chinese novel Ju-Kia-Li or The Two Fair Cousins, I find a motto to a chapter (quoted): ‘He who aims at success should be continually on guard against a thousand accidents. How many preparations are necessary before the sour plum begins to sweeten…But if supreme happiness as to be attained in the space of an hour, of what use would be in life the noblest sentiments.’” (July 29)

****************

[He examines a wood thrush nest]: “ This composition viewed through a microscope, has almost a cellular structure.” (July 31)

****************

{On lilies]: “How satisfactory is the fragrance of this flower! It is the emblem of purity. It reminds me of a young country maiden. It is just so simple and unproved. Wholesome as the odor of a cow. It is not a highly refined odor, but merely a fresh youthful morning sweetness….a simple maiden on her way to school, her face surrounded by a white ruff, But how quickly it becomes the prey of insects!”(August 5)

****************

[After describing river willows]: “They resound still with the twitter of the King bird, that aerial an spirited bird hovering over them, swallow-like, which loves best methinks, to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him.” (Same)

****************

I think I can speak impartially when I say that I never met with a stream so suitable for boating and botanizing as the Concord, and fortunately nobody knows it. (August 6)

****************

We pass haymakers in every meadow who may think we are idlers….While they look after the open meadows we farm the tract between the river brinks and behold the shores from that side. We too are harvesting an annual crop with our eyes, and think you Nature is not glad to display her beauty to us? (Same)

****************

This is pure summer; (Same)

****************

I hear of pickers ordered out of the huckle-berry fields, and I see stakes set up with written notices forbidding any to pick there. ….We are not yet grateful enough that we have lived part of our lives before these evil days came. What becomes of the true value of country life? What if you must go to market for it…It is as if the hangman were to perform the wedding ceremony, or were to preside at the communion table. Such is the inevitable tendency of our civilization–to reduce huckleberries to a level with beef-steak. I suspect that the inhabitants of England and of the Continent of Europe have thus lost their natural rights with the increase in population and of monopolies. The wild fruits of the earth disappear before civilization and are to be found in large markets. The whole country becomes, as it were, a town or beaten common, and the fruits left are a few hips and haws, (Same)

****************

[Describing mud turtles climbing up willow saplings]: “ It is the turtle’s castle and path to heaven.” (August 7)

****************
It is surprising to what extent the world is ruled by cliques. They who constitute or at least lead New England of New York society, in the eyes of the world, are but a clique, a few “men of the age” and of the town who work best in the harness provided for them. The institutions of almost all kind are thus of a sectarian or party character. Newspapers, magazines, colleges, and all forms of government and religion express the superficial activity of a few, the mass either conforming or not attending…The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office holders though they be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, in as much as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society. (August 9)

****************

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are non-hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as the first. (Same)

****************

You say that you have traveled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique? (Same)

****************

The mind tastes but few flavors in the course of a year. We art visited by but few thoughts which are worth entertaining, and we chew the cud of these increasingly. What ruminant spirits we are!...If I am visited by a thought. I chew that cud each successive morning as long as there is any flavor in it. Until my keepers shake down some fresh fodder. Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot.

**********************************************************************

“His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most
others they would only give false impressions. I have never been
able to understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care
so much about being a writer? Why did he pay so much
attention to his own thoughts? Why was he so
dissatisfied with everyone else, etc?
Why was he so much interested
in the river and the woods
and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover
what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with
me. I have lain fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
or go to :
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm
or to:
the Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

*********
For L-S Alumni
LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html

**********
To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

*********
Special note:

Some of you L-S folks might recall that former history teacher Thom Thacker created
an amazing Civil Rights Rap video. It can now be found on YouTube at:
www.youtube.com/civilrightsrap

Whether from L-S or not, I think everyone on this list who appreciates creative curriculum would enjoy this video.

**************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. XI, No. 5

Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

*******************************************************

"Says I to myself" should be the motto of my journal."
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

The wood thrush's was a peculiarly woodland nest made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it. (August 10, 1858)

*************

[Re. White Pond]: "Some boys bathing shake the whole pond." (Aug. 12)

*************

You cannot commonly refer the shadow to its substance, but by touching the leaf with your paddle. Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself...Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is protean and somewhat weird even. (Aug. 13)

*************

[On thinking about the bird songs he had recently heard]: "These might be called the peewee days." (Aug. 15)

*************

Wars are not over yet. I hear of one [boy?] in the outskirts learning to drum every night; and think you there will be no field for him? He relies on his instincts. He is instinctively meeting a demand. (Aug. 6)

*************

[On the 'summer ducks' he saw on the river, later shot by "Goodwin' and eaten by "Mrs.____']: "What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other's sins as well as burdens...They belonged to me as anyone when they were alive but it was considered of more importance that Mrs.______ should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive." (Same)

*************

Last evening one of our neighbors who had just completed a costly house and front yard, the most showy in the village, illuminated in honor of the Atlantic
[telegraph] cable. I read in great letters before the house the sentence "Glory to God in the highest." But it seemed to me that was not a sentiment to be illuminated, but to keep dark about. A simple and genuine sentiment of reverence would not emblazon these words on a signboard in the streets. They were exploding countless crackers beneath it, and gay company passing in and out, made it a kind of housewarming. I felt a kind of shame for [it], and was inclined to pass quickly by, the ideas of indecent exposure and cant being suggested. What is religion? That which is never spoken. (Aug. 18)

*************

When I see the first heron, like a dusky blue wave undulating over our meadows again, I think, since I saw them going northward the other day, how many of these forms have been added to our landscape, complete from bill to toe, while, perhaps, I have idled. (Aug. 19)

*************

[He sails to Baker Farm, with a new sail spliced to his old]: "It pulls like an ox, and makes me think that there's more wind abroad than there is...How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wandering in the river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail, like a Grecian god. I can even worship it after a healthy fashion. And, then, how it becomes my boat and the river,-a simple homely square sail, all for use, not show, so low and broad!...The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull. If I had had this a dozen years ago, my voyages would have been performed more quickly and easily. But probably I should have lived less in them." (Aug. 22)

*************

There is no plateau on which on which Nature rests at mid-summer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter. (Aug. 23)

*************

The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i.e., writing in my Journal. (Same)

*************

Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, "You don't want to discover something new but to discover something old," i.e., to be reminded that such things still are. (Same)

*************

Under my new sail, the boat dashes off like a horse with bits in his teeth...I am flattered because my stub sail frightens a haymaker's horse tied under a maple while his masters are loading. His nostrils dilate, he snorts, and tried to break loose. He eyes with terror this white wind steed. No winder he is alarmed at introducing such a competitor into the river meadows. (Aug. 24)

*************

The white maples in a winding row along the river and the meadows edge are rounded hoary-white masses, as if they showed only the underside of their leaves. Those which have been changed by water are less bright than a week ago. They now from this point...are a pale lake, mingling very agreeably with the taller hoary-white ones. This little color in the hoary meadow edging is very exhilarating to behold and the most memorable phenomenon of the day. It is as when quarters of the peach of this color are boiled with white apple quarters. (Same)

*************

[He sees many men haying along the shore]: " What an adventure, to get the hay from year to year from these miles and miles of river meadow." (Same)

*************

I look down a straight reach of water of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge-and this I can do at any season-the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect-to see a part of the earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. (Same)

*************

I walk encouraged between the tufts of purple wood grass.... These two are almost the first grasses that I have learned to distinguish. I did not know by how many friends I was surrounded. The purple of their culms excites me like that of the pokeweed stems.
(Aug. 26)

*************

Think what refuge there is for me before August is over, from college commencements and society that isolates me! I can skulk amid the tufts of purple wood grass on the borders of the Great Fields. Wherever I walk this afternoon the purple-fingered grass stands like a guide-board and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have lately traveled. (Same)

*************

[How we trample down plants without noticing]: "Yet, perchance, if he even favorably attended them, he may be overcome by their beauty." (Same)

*************

Even the humblest plant, or weed, sands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain! (Same)

*************
[More on the purple grass which he never before "recognized]: "I have pushed against them and trampled them down, forsooth, and now at last they have, as it were, risen up and blessed me. Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid. (Same)

**********************************************************************

"His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most
others they would only give false impressions. I have never been
able to understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care
so much about being a writer? Why did he pay so much
attention to his own thoughts? Why was he so
dissatisfied with everyone else, etc?
Why was he so much interested
in the river and the woods
and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge."

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I
love to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover
what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with
me. I have lain fallow long enough." -HDT

**********

"Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest" -HDT

**********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

*************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 6

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

March 2008

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it. (August 10, 1858)

*************

[Re. White Pond]: “Some boys bathing shake the whole pond.” (Aug. 12)

*************

You cannot commonly refer the shadow to its substance, but by touching the leaf with your paddle. Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself…Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is protean and somewhat weird even. (Aug. 13)

*************

[On thinking about the bird songs he had recently heard]: “These might be called the peewee days.” (Aug. 15)

*************

[On the ‘summer ducks’ he saw on the river, later shot by “Goodwin’ and eaten by “Mrs.____’]: “What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other’s sins as well as burdens…They belonged to me as anyone when they were alive but it was considered of more importance that Mrs.______ should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive.” (Same)

*************

Last evening one of our neighbors who had just completed a costly house and front yard, the most showy in the village, illuminated in honor of the Atlantic [telegraph] cable. I read in great letters before the house the sentence “Glory to God in the highest.” But it seemed to me that was not a sentiment to be illuminated, but to keep dark about. A simple and genuine sentiment of reverence would not emblazon these words on a signboard in the streets. They were exploding countless crackers beneath it, and gay company passing in and out, made it a kind of housewarming. I felt a kind of shame for [it], and was inclined to pass quickly by, the ideas of indecent exposure and cant being suggested. What is religion? That which is never spoken. (Aug. 18)

*************

[He sails to Baker Farm, with a new sail spliced to his old]: “It pulls like an ox, and makes me think that there’s more wind abroad than there is…How sturdily it pulls, shooting us along, catching more wind than I knew to be wandering in the river valley! It suggests a new power in the sail, like a Grecian god. I can even worship it after a healthy fashion. And, then, how it becomes my boat and the river,–a simple homely square sail, all for use, not show, so low and broad!…The boat is like a plow drawn by a winged bull. If I had had this a dozen years ago, my voyages would have been performed more quickly and easily. But probably I should have lived less in them.” (Aug. 22)

*************

There is no plateau on which on which Nature rests at mid-summer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter. (Aug. 23)

*************

Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, “You don’t want to discover something new but to discover something old,” i.e., to be reminded that such things still are. (Same)

*************

Under my new sail, the boat dashes off like a horse with bits in his teeth…I am flattered because my stub sail frightens a haymaker’s horse tied under a maple while his masters are loading. His nostrils dilate, he snorts, and tried to break loose. He eyes with terror this white wind steed. No winder he is alarmed at introducing such a competitor into the river meadows. (Aug. 24)

*************

The white maples in a winding row along the river and the meadows edge are rounded hoary-white masses, as if they showed only the underside of their leaves. Those which have been changed by water are less bright than a week ago. They now from this point…are a pale lake, mingling very agreeably with the taller hoary-white ones. This little color in the hoary meadow edging is very exhilarating to behold and the most memorable phenomenon of the day. It is as when quarters of the peach of this color are boiled with white apple quarters. (Same)

*************

[He sees many men haying along the shore]: “ What an adventure, to get the hay from year to year from these miles and miles of river meadow.” (Same)

*************

I look down a straight reach of water of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge–and this I can do at any season–the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect–to see a part of the earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. (Same)

*************

I walk encouraged between the tufts of purple wood grass…. These two are almost the first grasses that I have learned to distinguish. I did not know by how many friends I was surrounded. The purple of their culms excites me like that of the pokeweed stems.
(Aug. 26)

*************

[How we trample down plants without noticing]: “Yet, perchance, if he even favorably attended them, he may be overcome by their beauty.” (Same)

*************

Even the humblest plant, or weed, sands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain! (Same)

*************
[More on the purple grass which he never before “recognized]: “I have pushed against them and trampled them down, forsooth, and now at last they have, as it were, risen up and blessed me. Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid. (Same)

**************************************************************************

“His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not
meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most others
they would only give false impressions. I have never been able to
understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care so much
about being a writer? Why did he pay so much attention to his
own thoughts? Why was he so dissatisfied with everyone
else, etc? Why was he so much interested in the river
and the woods and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like to see complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
or go to
the Drippings Archive at:
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm
or to:
the Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

*********

For L-S Alumni

LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html

**********

To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

*************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 7

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

April 2008

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

[He sees the first colorful leaves blown to the ground in a storm] “I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year, and have begun to descent the other slope.” (August 28, 1858)

********

Has not the mind too its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened and the rain loosened? Are there no purple reflections from the culms of thought in my mind? (Aug. 29)

********

Ah! What a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22nd! Think of hearing as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its true source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud, if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk, invested by sound–the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. (Aug. 29)

********

Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the tender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sunshine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land. (Same)

********

Who witnesses the gathering of hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! (Same)

********

[On suckers]: “They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great, ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge…They are poor soft fish, however…and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown paper.” (Same)

********

How hard one must work to acquire his language,–words by which to express himself…With the knowledge of the name [of a plant] comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. That shore is more describable, and poetic even. (Same)

********

There is not a hazel bush, but some squirrel has his eye on the fruit, and he will be pretty sure to anticipate you. As we say, “Tools to those who can use them,” so we say, “Nuts to those who can get them. (Sept. 3)

********

[On a friend’s comment]: “Seeing a stake-driver flying up the river, he observed that when you saw the bird flying about it was a never-failing sign of a storm approaching. How many of these sayings like this arise not from a close and frequent observation of the phenomenon of nature, but from a distant and casual one.” (Sept 6)

********

I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting, warm, sunny: the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light….; the earth-song of the cricket come up through all; and ever and anon the hot Z-ing of the locust is heard…The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side of Nature’s palette. (Sept. 7)

********

It is a good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the effort you had professed to yourself you do accomplish something else. So, in my botanizing, or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that going for one thing, I get another thing…Though man proposeth, God disposeth all.” (Sept. 8)

********

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants…I find when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walks. (Sept 9)

********

The sportsman will paddle a boat now five or six miles, and wade in water up to his knees, being out all day without his dinner, and think himself amply compensated if he bags two or three yellow legs. The most persistent and sacrificing endeavors are necessary to succeed in any direction. (Same)

********

We live in the same world as the Orientals, far off as it may seem. Nature is the same here to a chemist’s test. The weeping willow will grow here. The peach too has been transplanted and is agreeable to our palates. So are their poetry and philosophy agreeable to us. (Same)

********

From many a barn these days, I hear the sound of the flail. For how many generations this sound will continue to be heard here! Not at least until they discover a new way of separating the chaff from the wheat. (Sept. 13)

********

To Walden–I paddle about the pond, for a rarity. (Sept 15)

********

It is as if the earth were one ripe fruit, like a muskmelon yellowed in the September sun. (Sept. 18)

********

The small white pines on the side of Fairhaven Hill now look remarkably green, by contrast with the surrounding shrubbery, which is recently imbrowned. You are struck by their distinct liquid green…The cows on the hillside are a brighter red amid the pines and brown hazel. (Same)

********

[Sees a sunset “on fire”]: “And when you looked with head inverted, the effect was increased ten-fold, till it seemed a world of enchantment. We only regretted that it had not a due moral effect on us scapegraces.” (Same)

**********************************************************************

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

bill_schechter@lsrhs.net
or go to the Drippings Archive, at :
http://schechsplace.tripod.com/ht.htm
or: the Thoreau Institute's web site:
http://www.walden.org/education/index_Schechter_Journal_Drippings.htm

*********************************************************************************************

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 8

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

May 2008

* * *

A SPECIAL REMEMBRANCE

Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862. Louisa May Alcott
remembered:

"Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;
The Genius of the wood is lost.”

-from her poem, Thoreau's Flute

**********************************************************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*********************************************************************************************

I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry. The beauty of clamshell hill, near at hand, with its sandy ravines, in which the cricket chirps. (September 18, 1858)

*********

[He has said that the spectacular sunset was something that could adorn palaces in the Orient. Now he addresses the beauty nearest us]: “This is an occidental city, not less glorious than we dream of in the sunset sky.” (Same)

*********

[He notes astronomers can calculate the orbit of a comet]: “ [B]ut what astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down and tell me where it deposits its precious freight at last. It may still be traveling when I am sleeping.” (Sept. 28)

*********

[Describes “buoyant spirits, as he and his group walk in the Gloucester area]: “Though we walked all day, it seemed the days were not long enough to get tired in. Some villages we went through or by without communicating with any inhabitant, but saw them as quietly and distantly as a picture.” (Sept. 30)

*********

Let a full-grown young cock stand near you. How full of life he is, from the tip of his bill through his trembling wattles and comb and his bright eye to the extremity of his clean toes. How alert and restless, to every sound and watching every motion! How various his notes, from the finest and shrillest alarum as a hawk sails over, surpassing the most accomplished violinist on the short strings, to a hoarse and terrene voice or cluck. He has a word for every occasion, for the dog that rushes past and partlet cackling in the barn. And then how elevating himself and flapping his wings he gathers impetus and air and launches forth that world-renowned ear-piercing strain! Not a vulgar note of defiance but the mere effervescence of life, like the bursting of a bubble in a wine cup. Is any gem so bright as his eye? (Oct. 1)

*********

The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them. The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. (Same)

*********

The cat sleeps on her head! What does this portend! It is more alarming than a dozen comets. How long prejudice survives! The big-bodied fisherman asks me doubtingly about the comet seen these nights in the northwest,–if there is any danger to be apprehended from that side! I would fain suggest that only he is dangerous to himself. (Same)

*********

How many men have a fatal excess of manners! There was one came to our house the other evening and behaved very simply and well till the moment he was passing out the door. He then suddenly put on the airs of a well-bred man and consciously described some arc of beauty or other with his head or hand. It was but a slight flourish, but it has put me on the alert. (Oct. 3)

*********

See B____ a-fishing notwithstanding the wind. A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. Yet methinks his “misfortune” is good for him, and he is more mellow and humane. Perhaps he begins to perceive more clearly that the object of life is something else than acquiring property, and he really stands ion with nature and himself, and coming to understand his real position and relatioin truer relation to his fellow men than when he commanded a false respect for them. There he stands at length, perchance better employed than ever, holding communn to men in this world. It is better than a poor debtors’ prison, better than most successful money-getting. (Oct. 4)

*********

In the evening I am glad to find that my phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky. (October 5)

*********

No, methinks the autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. In the streets, the young sugar maples make the most show. As I look up the street from the Mill Dam, they look like painted screens standing before the houses to celebrate a gala-day. (Oct. 6)

*********

[Re. smooth sumachs in the woods]: “They stand perfectly distinct among the pines, with slender spreading arms, their leaflets drooping and somewhat curled though fresh. Yet, high-colored as they are, from their attitude and drooping, like scarfs, on rather bare and dark stems, they have a funereal effect, as if you were walking in the cemetery of people who mourned in scarlet.” (Same)

*********

My phosphorescent wood still glows a little more, though it has lain on my stove all day, and being wet, it is much improved still. (Same)

*********

[Watches night hawks from cliffs by Fairhaven Bay]: “Slender dark motes they are at last almost lost to sight, but every time they come round eastward, I see the light of the westerly sun reflected from the underside of their wings. (Oct 9)

*********

Those little bits of phosphorescent wood I picked up on the 4th have glowed each evening since, but required wetting to get the most light out of them. This evening, only one, about two inches long, showed any light. This was wet last evening, but is now apparently quite dry. If I should wet it again, it would no doubt glow again considerably. (Same)

*********

I am glad to see the woodchuck so fat in the orchard. It proves that it is the same nature that was of yore. (Oct 10)

***********************************************************************

“His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them intelligently. To most others
they would only give false impressions. I have never been able to
understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care so much
about being a writer? Why did he pay so much attention to his
own thoughts? Why was he so dissatisfied with everyone
else, etc? Why was he so much interested in the river
and the woods and the sky, etc?

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can’t discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough.” -HDT

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

If you would like to see complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

*********

For L-S Alumni

LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html
THE FORUM
http://www.Lincoln-SudburyForum.org

**********

To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. IX, No. 9

Excerpts from Thoreau’s Journal.
The Adventure Continues!

June 2008

* * *

The end of another incandescent year!
Journal Drippings will return on October 1
with more from the sunrise
mind of HD Thoreau!

*******************************************************

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal.”
-Journal, November 11, 1851

"Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me
as my own thoughts." -HDT

*******************************************************

The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired; appropriated by a spirit. If I take up a handful of earth, however separately interesting the particles may be, their relation to one another appears to be that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind… (October 10, 1858)

**************

The autumnal tints have not been so bright as usual this year, but why is hard to say.
(Oct. 3)

**************

I have heard of judges, accidentally met at an evening party, discussing the efficacy of the law and courts, and deciding that with the aid of the jury system, substantial justice was done! But taking those cases in which honest men refrain from going to law, together with those in which men, honest and dishonest, do go to law, I think that the law is really a “humbug” and a benefit principally to the lawyer. (Oct. 12)

**************

Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length very perfect reflections in the still water. The blue of the sky, and indeed all tints, are deepened in the reflection. (Oct 14)

**************

Hence we are struck by the prevalence of sky or light in the reflection, and at twilight dream that the light has gone down into the bosom of the water…In the reflection you have an infinite number of eyes to see for you and report the aspect of things each from its point of view. (Oct. 16)

**************

Methinks the reflections are never purer and more distinct than then now at the season of the fall of the leaf, just before the cool twilight has come, when the air has a finer grain. Just as our mental reflections are more distinct at this season of the year, when the evenings grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings with their brighter fires begin. And painted ducks, too, often come and sail or float amid the painted leaves.
(Oct. 17)

**************

One reason I associate perfect reflections from still water with this and a later season may be that now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light is let into the water. The river reflects more light, therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an afterglow. (Same)

**************

Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success when they caused to be imported from further in the country some straight poles with the tops cut off, which they called sugar maple trees,-and a neighboring merchants clerk, as I remember by way of jest planted beans about them. Yet these which were jestingly called bean-poles are these days far the most beautiful objects noticeable in our streets. They are worth all and more than they have cost,-though one of the selectman did take the cold which occasioned his death in setting them out,-if only because they have filled the open eyes of children with rich color so unstintingly so many autumns. We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the spring, while they yield us so fair a prospect in the autumn. Wealth may be the inheritance of a few in the houses, but it is equally distributed on the Common.

This October festival costs no powder or ringing of bells, but every tree is a liberty-pole on which a thousand bright flags are run up. Hundreds of children’s eyes are steadily drinking in the color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad (Same).

**************

…Do you not think that it [the October splendor] will make some odds for the children that they were brought up under the maples? (Same)

**************

Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be the only colors a village can display? A village is not complete unless it has these trees to mark the seasons in it. They are as important as a town clock! Such a village will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose; an essential part is wanting. Let us have willows for spring; elms for summer; maples and walnuts and tupelos for autumn; evergreens for winter, and oaks for all seasons. What is a gallery in a house to a gallery in the street! (Same)

*************!

A village needs the stimulant of bright and cheery prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treeless waste, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most desperate and hardest drinkers. (Same)

**************

The trees repay the earth with interest from what they have taken from it. (Oct. 19)

**************

[He had seen someone working, making wooden trays by hand]: “I was more pleased with the sight of the trays because the tools used were so simple, and they were made by hand, and not by machinery. They make equally good pails, and cheaper as well as faster at the pail-factory with home made ones, but that interests me less, because the man is turned partly into a machine there himself. In this case the workman’s relation to his work is more poetic, he also shows more dexterity and is more of a man. You come away from the great factory saddened, as if the chief end of man were to make pails, but in the case of the countryman who makes a few by hand, rainy days, the relative importance of human life of pails is preserved, and you come away thinking of the simple and helpful life of the man–you do not turn pale at the thought,–and would fain go to making pails yourself. We admire more the man who can use an axe or adze skillfully, than him who can merely tend a machine. When labor is reduced to turning a crank, it is no longer amusing, no longer truly profitable…(Same)

**************

From the higher ground west of the stump-field fence. The stagnant river gleams like liquid gossamer in the sun, and I can hardly distinguish the sparkle occasioned by an insect from the white breast of the duck. (Oct. 20)

**************

As I look over the smooth gleaming surface of White Pond, I am attracted by the sun-sparkles on it, as if fiery serpents were crossing to and fro. Yet if you were there you would find only insignificant insects. (Same)

**************

The order has gone forth for them to rest. As each tree casts its leaves, it stands careless and free, like a horse forced from its harness, or like one who has done his years. (Oct. 22)

**********************************************************************

Something peculiar, I judge.”

- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's

**********

“Of all the strange and accountable things, this journalizing is the
strangest” –HDT

***********************************************************

Spring has arrived. It's time to put down the books down, go outside,
and take a look around!

***********************************************************

If you would like a complete copy of "Journal Drippings" to date,
just email me at:

*********

For L-S Alumni

LS HISTORY/CULTURE PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/publications/HistoryCulture/
ALUMNI PAGE
http://www.lsrhs.net/alumni/default.html
THE FORUM
http://www.Lincoln-SudburyForum.org

**********

To subscribe to the L-S Alumni Newsletter, write:
bill_schechter@lsrhs.net

Website by Altolus Digital