I am struck with the difference between my feet and my hands. My feet are much nearer to foreign or inanimate matter or nature than my hands; they are more brute, they are more like the earth they tread on, they are more clod-like and lumpish, and I scarcely animate them.
I am wont to think that I could spend my days contentedly in any retired country house that I see; for I see it to advantage now and without incumbrance; I have not yet imported my humdrum thoughts, my prosaic habits, into it to mar the landscape. What is this beauty in the landscape but a certain fertility in me? I look in vain to see it realized but in my own life. If I could wholly cease to be ashamed of myself, I think that all my days would be fair.
That the brilliant leaves of autumn are not withered ones is proved by the fact that they wilt when gathered as soon as the green.
By now, October 31st, they are all withered. This has been the most perfect afternoon in the year. The air quite warm enough, perfectly still and dry and clear, and not a cloud in the sky. Scarcely the song of a cricket is heard to disturb the stillness. When they ceased their song I do not know. I wonder that the impetus which our hearing had got did not hurry us into deafness over a precipitous silence. There must have been a thick web of cobwebs on the grass this morning, promising this fair day, for I see them still through the afternoon, covering not only the grass but the bushes and the trees. They are stretched across the unfrequented roads from weed to weed, and broken by the legs of the horses.
I thought to-day that it would be pleasing to study the dead and withered plants, the ghosts of plants, which now remain in the fields, for they fill almost as large a space to the eye as the green have done. They live not in memory only, but to the fancy and imagination.
As I was stalking over the surface of this planet in the dark to-night, I started a plover resting on the ground and heard him go off with whistling wings.
When I lived in the woods the wasps came by thousands to my lodge in November, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows and on the walls over my head, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out. But I did not trouble myself to get rid of them. They never molested me, though they bedded with me, and they gradually disappeared into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter. I saw a squash-bug go slowly behind a clapboard to avoid winter. As some of these melon seeds come up in the garden again in the spring, so some of these squash-bugs come forth. The flies are for a long time in a somnambulic state. They have too little energy or vis vitæ to clean their wings or heads, which are covered with dust. They buzz and bump their heads against the windows two or three times a day, or lie on their backs in a trance, and that is all, - two or three short spurts. One of these mornings we shall hear that Mr. Minott had to break the ice to water his cow. And so it will go on till the ground freezes. If the race had never lived through a winter, what would they think was coming?
Things do not change; we change. If I were confined to a corner in a garett all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts.
(undated entry)
Equally simple was the observation which an Indian made at Mr. Hoar’s door the other day, who went there to sell his baskets. “No, we don’t want any,“ said the one who went to the door. “What! do you mean to starve us?” asked the Indian in astonishment, as he was going out [sic] the gate. The Indian seems to have said: I too will do like the white man; I will go into business. He sees his white neighbors well off around him, and he thinks that if he only enters on the profession of basket-making, riches will flow in unto him as a matter of course; just as the lawyer weaves arguments, and by some magical means wealth and standing follow. He thinks that when he has made the baskets he has done his part, now it is yours to buy them. He has not discovered that it is necessary for him to make it worth your while to buy them, or make some which it will be worth your while to buy. With great simplicity he says to himself: I too will be a man of business; I will go into trade. It is n’t enough simply to make baskets. You have got to sell them.
I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven, - would keep sober always, and lead a sane life not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish habitually use any other. Think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Wine is not a noble liquor, except when it is confined to the pores of the grape. Even music is wont to be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.
