Talking with Walcott and Staples to-day, they declared that John Brown did wrong. When I said that I thought he was right, they agreed in asserting that he did wrong because he threw his life away, and that no man had a right to undertake anything which he knew would cost him his life. I inquired if Christ did not foresee that he would be crucified if he preached such doctrines as he did, but they both, though as if it was their only escape, asserted that they did not believe that he did. Upon which a third party threw in, “You do not think that he had so much foresight as Brown.” Of course, they as good as said that, if Christ had foreseen that he would be crucified, he would have “backed out.” Such are the principles and the logic of the mass of men.
This is a very beautiful November day, - a cool but clear, crystalline air, through which even the white pines with their silvery sheen are an affecting sight. It is a day to behold and to ramble over the hard (stiffening) and withered surface of the tawny earth. Every plant’s down glitters with a silvery light along the Marlborough road, - the sweet-fern, the lespedeza, and bare blueberry twigs, to say nothing of the weather-worn tufts of Andropogon scoparius. A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. I rejoice in the bare, bleak, hard, and barren-looking surface of the tawny pastures, the firm outline of the hills, so convenient to walk over, and the air so bracing and wholesome. Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out. On some hickories you see a thousand black nuts against the sky.
I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller’s thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above, and thus the factories which use it may distribute its seeds by means of the streams which turn their machinery, from one to another. The one who first cultivated the teasel extensively in this town is said to have obtained the seed when it was not to be purchased - the culture being monopolized - by sweeping a wagon which he had loaned to a teasel-raiser.
Sawed off half of an old pitch pine stump at Tommy Wheeler’s hollow. I found that, though the surface was entire and apparently sound except one or two small worm-holes, and the sap was evidently decaying, yet within, or just under the surface, it was extensively honeycombed by worms, which did not eat out to the surface. Those rings included in the outmost four or five inches were the most decayed, - including the sapwood.
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to an extreme old age.
How much of beauty - of color, as well as form - on which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us! No one but a botanist is likely to distinguish nicely the different shades of green with which the open surface of the earth is clothed, - not even a landscape-painter if he does not know the species of sedges and grasses which paint it. With respect to the color of grass, most of those even who attend peculiarly to the aspects of nature only observe that it is more or less dark or light, green or brown, or velvety, fresh or parched, etc. But if you are studying grasses you look for another and different beauty, and you find it, in the wonderful variety of color, etc., presented by the various species.
The best way to drink, especially at a shallow spring, or one so sunken below the surface as to be difficult to reach, is through a tube. You can commonly find growing near a spring a hollow reed or weed of some kind suitable for this purpose, such as rue or touch-me-not or water saxifrage, or you can carry one in your pocket.
Let an oak be hewed and put into the frame of a house, where it is sheltered, and it will last several centuries. Even as a sill it may last one hundred and fifty years. But simply cut it down and let it lie, though in an open pasture, and it will probably be thoroughly rotten in twenty-five years. There is the oak cut down at Clamshell some twenty years ago, the butt left on the ground. It has about two-thirds wasted away, and is hardly fit for fuel.
The tumultuous singing of birds, a burst of melody, wakes me up (the window being open) these mornings at dawn. What a matinade to have poured into your slumber!
Quite a fog this morning.
About 1 P. M., notice thunder-clouds in west and hear the muttering. As yesterday, it splits at sight of Concord and goes south and north. Nevertheless about 3 P. M. begins a steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower.
This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here.
Carex flava out, possibly a week.
