Passages from the American Notebooks Volume II Part 10

For the virtuoso's collection,--the pen with which Faust signed away his salvation, with a drop of blood dried in it.

An article on newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts,--a country newspaper, methinks, rather than a city one.

An eating-house, where all the dishes served out, even to the bread and salt, shall be poisoned with the adulterations that are said to be practised. Perhaps Death himself might be the cook.

Personify the century,--talk of its present middle age,--of its youth,-- and its adventures and prospects.

An uneducated countryman, supposing he had a live frog in his stomach, applied himself to the study of medicine in order to find a cure for this disease; and he became a profound physician. Thus misfortune, physical or moral, may be the means of educating and elevating us.

"Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerium,"--or "Directions for a candidate"

for the ministry,--with the autographs of four successive clergymen in it, all of them, at one time or another, residents of the old Manse,-- Daniel Bliss, 1734; William Emerson, 1770; Ezra Ripley, 1781; and Samuel Ripley, son of the preceding. The book, according to a Latin memorandum, was sold to Daniel Bliss by Daniel Bremner, who, I suppose, was another student of divinity. Printed at Boston "for Thomas Hanc.o.c.k, and sold at his shop in Ann St. near the Draw Bridge, 1726." William Emerson was son-in-law of Daniel Bliss. Ezra Ripley married the widow of said William Emerson, and Samuel Ripley was their son.

Mrs. Prescott has an ox whose visage bears a strong resemblance to Daniel Webster,--a majestic brute.

The spells of witches have the power of producing meats and viands that have the appearance of a sumptuous feast, which the Devil furnishes. But a Divine Providence seldom permits the meat to be good, but it has generally some bad taste or smell,--mostly wants salt,--and the feast is often without bread.

An article on cemeteries, with fantastic ideas of monuments; for instance, a sun-dial;--a large, wide carved stone chair, with some such motto as "Rest and Think," and others, facetious or serious.

"Mamma, I see a part of your smile,"--a child to her mother, whose mouth was partly covered by her hand.

"The syrup of my bosom,"--an improvisation of a little girl, addressed to an imaginary child.

"The wind-turn," "the lightning-catch," a child's phrases for weatherc.o.c.k and lightning-rod.

"Where's the man-mountain of these Liliputs?" cried a little boy, as he looked at a small engraving of the Greeks getting into the wooden horse.

When the sun s.h.i.+nes brightly on the new snow, we discover ranges of hills, miles away towards the south, which we have never seen before.

To have the North Pole for a fis.h.i.+ng-pole, and the Equinoctial Line for a fis.h.i.+ng-line.

If we consider the lives of the lower animals, we shall see in them a close parallelism to those of mortals;--toil, struggle, danger, privation, mingled with glimpses of peace and ease; enmity, affection, a continual hope of bettering themselves, although their objects lie at less distance before them than ours can do. Thus, no argument for the imperfect character of our existence and its delusory promises, and its apparent injustice, can be drawn in reference to our immortality, without, in a degree, being applicable to our brute brethren.

Lenox, February 12th, 1851.--A walk across the lake with Una. A heavy rain, some days ago, has melted a good deal of the snow on the intervening descent between our house and the lake; but many drifts, depths, and levels yet remain; and there is a frozen crust, sufficient to bear a man's weight, and very slippery. Adown the slopes there are tiny rivulets, which exist only for the winter. Bare, brown s.p.a.ces of gra.s.s here and there, but still so infrequent as only to diversify the scene a little. In the woods, rocks emerging, and, where there is a slope immediately towards the lake, the snow is pretty much gone, and we see partridge-berries frozen, and outer sh.e.l.ls of walnuts, and chestnut-burrs, heaped or scattered among the roots of the trees. The walnut-husks mark the place where the boys, after nutting, sat down to clear the walnuts of their outer sh.e.l.l. The various species of pine look exceedingly brown just now,--less beautiful than those trees which shed their leaves. An oak-tree, with almost all its brown foliage still rustling on it. We clamber down the bank, and step upon the frozen lake, It was snow-covered for a considerable time; but the rain overspread it with a surface of water, or imperfectly melted snow, which is now hard frozen again; and the thermometer having been frequently below zero, I suppose the ice may be four or five feet thick. Frequently there are great cracks across it, caused, I suppose, by the air beneath, and giving an idea of greater firmness than if there were no cracks; round holes, which have been hewn in the marble pavement by fishermen, and are now frozen over again, looking darker than the rest of the surface; s.p.a.ces where the snow was more imperfectly dissolved than elsewhere little crackling spots, where a thin surface of ice, over the real ma.s.s, crumples beneath one's foot; the track of a line of footsteps, most of them vaguely formed, but some quite perfectly, where a person pa.s.sed across the lake while its surface was in a state of slush, but which are now as hard as adamant, and remind one of the traces discovered by geologists in rocks that hardened thousands of ages ago. It seems as if the person pa.s.sed when the lake was in an intermediate state between ice and water. In one spot some pine boughs, which somebody had cut and heaped there for an unknown purpose. In the centre of the lake, we see the surrounding hills in a new att.i.tude, this being a basin in the midst of them. Where they are covered with wood, the aspect is gray or black; then there are bare slopes of unbroken snow, the outlines and indentations being much more hardly and firmly defined than in summer.

We went southward across the lake, directly towards Monument Mountain, which reposes, as I said, like a headless sphinx. Its prominences, projections, and roughnesses are very evident; and it does not present a smooth and placid front, as when the gra.s.s is green and the trees in leaf. At one end, too, we are sensible of precipitous descents, black and s.h.a.ggy with the forest that is likely always to grow there; and, in one streak, a headlong sweep downward of snow. We just set our feet on the farther sh.o.r.e, and then immediately returned, facing the northwest-wind, which blew very sharply against us.

After landing, we came homeward, tracing up the little brook so far as it lay in our course. It was considerably swollen, and rushed fleetly on its course between overhanging banks of snow and ice, from which depended adamantine icicles. The little waterfalls with which we had impeded it in the summer and autumn could do no more than form a large ripple, so much greater was the volume of water. In some places the crust of frozen snow made a bridge quite over the brook; so that you only knew it was there by its brawling sound beneath.

The sunsets of winter are incomparably splendid, and when the ground is covered with snow, no brilliancy of tint expressible by words can come within an infinite distance of the effect. Our southern view at that time, with the clouds and atmospherical hues, is quite indescribable and unimaginable; and the various distances of the hills which lie between us and the remote dome of Taconic are brought out with an accuracy unattainable in summer. The transparency of the air at this season has the effect of a telescope in bringing objects apparently near, while it leaves the scene all its breadth. The sunset sky, amidst its splendor, has a softness and delicacy that impart themselves to a white marble world.

February 18th.--A walk, yesterday afternoon, with the children; a bright, and rather cold day, breezy from the north and westward. There has been a good deal of soaking rain lately, and it has, in great measure, cleared hills and plains of snow, only it may be seen lying in spots, and on each side of stone-walls, in a pretty broad streak. The gra.s.s is brown and withered, and yet, scattered all amongst it, on close inspection, one finds a greenness,--little shrubs that have kept green under all the severity of winter, and seem to need no change to fit them for midsummer.

In the woods we see stones covered with moss that retains likewise a most lively green. Where the trees are dense, the snow still lies under them.

On the sides of the mountains, some miles off, the black pines and the white snow among them together produce a gray effect. The little streams are the most interesting objects at this time; some that have an existence only at this season,--Mississippis of the moment;--yet glide and tumble along as if they were perennial. The familiar ones seem strange by their breadth and volume; their little waterfalls set off by glaciers on a small scale. The sun has by this time force enough to make sheltered nooks in the angles of woods, or on banks, warm and comfortable. The lake is still of adamantine substance, but all round the borders there is a watery margin, altogether strewed or covered with thin and broken ice, so that I could not venture on it with the children.

A chickadee was calling in the woods yesterday,--the only small bird I have taken note of yet; but, crows have been cawing in the woods for a week past, though not in very great numbers.

February 22d.--For the last two or three days there has been a warm, soaking, southeasterly rain, with a spongy moisture diffused through the atmosphere. The snow has disappeared, except in spots which are the ruins of high drifts, and patches far up on the hillsides. The mists rest all day long on the brows of the hills that shut in our valley. The road over which I walk every day to and from the village is in the worst state of mud and mire, soft, slippery, nasty to tread upon; while the gra.s.s beside it is scarcely better, being so oozy and so overflowed with little streams, and sometimes an absolute bog. The rivulets race along the road, adown the hills; and wherever there is a permanent brooklet, however generally insignificant, it is now swollen into importance, and the rumble and tumble of its waterfalls may be heard a long way off. The general effect of the day and scenery is black, black, black. The streams are all as turbid as mud-puddles.

Imitators of original authors might be compared to plaster casts of marble statues, or the imitative book to a cast of the original marble.

March 11th.--After the ground had been completely freed of snow, there has been a snow-storm for the two days preceding yesterday, which made the earth all white again. This morning, at sunrise, the thermometer stood at about 18 degrees above zero. Monument Mountain stands out in great prominence, with its dark forest-covered sides, and here and there a large, white patch, indicating tillage or pasture land; but making a generally dark contrast with the white expanse of the frozen and snow-covered lake at its base, and the more undulating white of the surrounding country. Yesterday, under the suns.h.i.+ne of midday, and with many voluminous clouds hanging over it, and a mist of wintry warmth in the air, it had a kind of visionary aspect, although still it was brought out in striking relief. But though one could see all its bulgings, round swells, and precipitous abruptnesses, it looked as much akin to the clouds as to solid earth and rock substance. In the early suns.h.i.+ne of the morning, the atmosphere being very clear, I saw the dome of Taconic with more distinctness than ever before, the snow-patches and brown, uncovered soil on its round head being fully visible. Generally it is but a dark blue unvaried mountain-top. All the ruggedness of the intervening hill-country was likewise effectively brought out. There seems to be a sort of illuminating quality in new snow, which it loses after being exposed for a day or two to the suit and atmosphere.

For a child's story,--the voyage of a little boat, made of a chip, with a birch-bark sail, down a river.

March 31st.--A walk with the children yesterday forenoon. We went through the wood, where we found partridge-berries, half hidden among the dry, fallen leaves; thence down to the brook. This little brook has not cleansed itself from the disarray of the past autumn and winter, and is much embarra.s.sed and choked up with brown leaves, twigs, and bits of branches. It rushes along merrily and rapidly, gurgling cheerfully, and tumbling over the impediments of stones with which the children and I made little waterfalls last year. At many spots, there are small basins or pools of calmer and smoother depth,--three feet, perhaps, in diameter, and a foot or two deep,--in which little fish are already sporting about; all elsewhere is tumble and gurgle and mimic turbulence. I sat on the withered leaves at the foot of a tree, while the children played, a little brook being the most fascinating plaything that a child can have.

Una jumped to and fro across it; Julian stood beside a pool, fis.h.i.+ng with a stick, without hook or line, and wondering that he caught nothing.

Then he made new waterfalls with mighty labor, pulling big stones out of the earth, and flinging them into the current. Then they sent branches of trees, or the outer sh.e.l.ls of walnuts, sailing down the stream, and watched their pa.s.sages through the intricacies of the way,--how they were hurried over in a cascade, hurried dizzily round in a whirlpool, or brought quite to a stand-still amongst the collected rubbish. At last Julian tumbled into the brook, and was wetted through and through so that we were obliged to come home; he squelching along all the way, with his india-rubber shoes full of water.

There are still patches of snow on the hills; also in the woods, especially on the northern margins. The lake is not yet what we may call thawed out, although there is a large s.p.a.ce of blue water, and the ice is separated from the sh.o.r.e everywhere, and is soft, water-soaked, and crumbly. On favorable slopes and exposures, the earth begins to look green; and almost anywhere, if one looks closely, one sees the greenness of the gra.s.s, or of little herbage, amidst the brown. Under the nut-trees are scattered some of the nuts of last year; the walnuts have lost their virtue, the chestnuts do not seem to have much taste, but the b.u.t.ternuts are in no manner deteriorated. The warmth of these days has a mistiness, and in many respects resembles the Indian summer, and is not at all provocative of physical exertion. Nevertheless, the general impression is of life, not death. One feels that a new season has begun.

Wednesday, April 9th.--There was a great rain yesterday,--wind from the southeast, and the last visible vestige of snow disappeared. It was a small patch near the summit of Bald Mountain, just on the upper verge of a grove of trees. I saw a slight remnant of it yesterday afternoon, but to-day it is quite gone. The gra.s.s comes up along the roadside and on favorable exposures, with a sort of green blush. Frogs have been melodious for a fortnight, and the birds sing pleasantly.

April 20th.--The children found Houstonias more than a week ago. There have been easterly wind, continual cloudiness, and occasional rain for a week. This morning opened with a great snow-storm from the northeast, one of the most earnest snow-storms of the year, though rather more moist than in midwinter. The earth is entirely covered. Now, as the day advances towards noon, it shows some symptoms of turning to rain.

April 28th.--For a week we have found the trailing arbutus pretty abundant in the woods. A day or two since, Una found a few purple violets, and yesterday a dandelion in bloom. The fragrance of the arbutus is spicy and exquisite.

May 16th.--In our walks now, the children and I find blue, white, and golden violets, the former, especially, of great size and richness.

Houstonias are very abundant, blue-whitening some of the pastures. They are a very sociable little flower, and dwell close together in communities,--sometimes covering a s.p.a.ce no larger than the palm of the hand, but keeping one another in cheerful heart and life,--sometimes they occupy a much larger s.p.a.ce. Lobelia, a pink flower, growing in the woods. Columbines, of a pale red, because they have lacked sun, growing in rough and rocky places on banks in the copses, precipitating towards the lake. The leaves of the trees are not yet out, but are so apparent that the woods are getting a very decided shadow. Water-weeds on the edge of the lake, of a deep green, with roots that seem to have nothing to do with earth, but with water only.

May 23d.--I think the face of nature can never look more beautiful than now, with this so fresh and youthful green,--the trees not being fully in leaf, yet enough so to give airy shade to the woods. The suns.h.i.+ne fills them with green light. Monument Mountain and its brethren are green, and the lightness of the tint takes away something from their ma.s.siveness and ponderosity, and they respond with livelier effect to the s.h.i.+ne and shade of the sky. Each tree now within sight stands out in its own individuality of line. This is a very windy day, and the light s.h.i.+fts with magical alternation. In a walk to the lake just now with the children, we found abundance of flowers,--wild geranium, violets of all families, red columbines, and many others known and unknown, besides innumerable blossoms of the wild strawberry, which has been in bloom for the past fortnight. The Houstonias seem quite to overspread some pastures, when viewed from a distance. Not merely the flowers, but the various shrubs which one sees,--seated, for instance, on the decayed trunk of a tree,--are well worth looking at, such a variety and such enjoyment they have of their new growth. Amid these fresh creations, we see others that have already run their course, and have done with warmth and suns.h.i.+ne,--the h.o.a.ry periwigs, I mean, of dandelions gone to seed.

August 7th.--Fourier states that, in the progress of the world, the ocean is to lose its saltness, and acquire the taste of a peculiarly flavored lemonade.

October 13th.--How pleasant it is to see a human countenance which cannot be insincere,--in reference to baby's smile.

The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!

"Is that a burden of suns.h.i.+ne on Apollo's back?" asked one of the children,--of the chlamys on our Apollo Belvedere.

October 21st.--Going to the village yesterday afternoon, I saw the face of a beautiful woman, gazing at me from a cloud. It was the full face, not the bust. It had a sort of mantle on the head, and a pleasant expression of countenance. The vision lasted while I took a few steps, and then vanished. I never before saw nearly so distinct a cloud-picture, or rather sculpture; for it came out in alto-rilievo on the body of the cloud.

October 27th.--The ground this morning is white with a thin covering of snow. The foliage has still some variety of hue. The dome of Taconic looks dark, and seems to have no snow on it, though I don't understand how that can be. I saw, a moment ago, on the lake, a very singular spectacle. There is a high northwest-wind ruffling the lake's surface, and making it blue, lead-colored, or bright, in stripes or at intervals; but what I saw was a boiling up of foam, which began at the right bank of the lake, and pa.s.sed quite across it; and the mist flew before it, like the cloud out of a steam-engine. A fierce and narrow blast of wind must have ploughed the water in a straight line, from side to side of the lake. As fast as it went on, the foam subsided behind it, so that it looked somewhat like a sea-serpent, or other monster, swimming very rapidly.

October 29th.--On a walk to Scott's pond, with Ellery Channing, we found a wild strawberry in the woods, not quite ripe, but beginning to redden.

For a week or two, the cider-mills have been grinding apples. Immense heaps of apples lie piled near them, and the creaking of the press is heard as the horse treads on. Farmers are repairing cider-barrels; and the wayside brook is made to pour itself into the bunghole of a barrel, in order to cleanse it for the new cider.