March 4. The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow, in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it make wether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you will, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations a kind fate (?) has provided. The humblest thinker who has been to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery, that the reward is not proportionate to the labor, that the gold has not the same look, is not the same thing, with the wages of honest. toil; but he practically forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle.He looks out for "the main chance" still; he buy a ticket in another lottery, nevertheless, where the fact is not so obvious. It is remarkable that among all the teachers and preachers there are so few moral teachers. I find the prophets and preachers employed in excusing the ways of men My most reverend seniors- doctors, deacons, and the illuminated - tell me with a reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder, not to be so tender about these things, -to lump all that, i. e. make a lump of gold of it. I was never refreshed by any advice on this subject; the highest I have heard was grovelling. It is not worth the while for you to undertake to reform the world in this particular. They tell me not to ask how my bread is buttered, -- it will make me sick if I do, -and the like.
It is discouraging to talk with men who will recognize no principles. How little use is made of reason in this world! You argue with a man for an hour, he agrees with you step by step, you are approaching a triumphant conclusion, you think that you have converted him; but ah, no, he has a habit, he takes a pinch of snuff, he remembers that he entertained a different opinion at the commencement of the controversy, and his reverence for the past compels him to reiterate it now.You began at the butt of the pole to curve it,you gradually bent it round according to rule, and planted the other end in the ground, and already inimagination saw the vine curling round thus segment of an arbor, under which a new generation was to recreate itself; but when you had done, just when the twig was bent, it sprang back to its former stubborn and unhandsome position like a bit of whalebone.
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the steam-engine. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once.
Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side,and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why, here every ant was a Buttrick, - " Fire! for God's sake, fire! " -and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.
I have no doubt it was a principle they fought for as much as our ancestors, and not a threepenny tax on their tea.
10 A.M. -Up river on ice to Fair Haven Pond.
The steam of the steam-engine rises to heaved this clear morning. The other day, when the weather was thick, I observed that it hugged the earth. Was the air lighter then? Some refer the music of the telegraph harp to the electricity passing along the wire! others,to the, air passing through the glasses. The air is fresher and the sky clearer in the morning. We have this morning the clear, cold, continent sky of January. The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings. Now I can take that walk along the river highway and the meadow which leads me under the boughs of the maples and the swamp white oaks, etc ., which in summer overhang the water. There I can now stand at my case, and study their phenomena, amid the sweet-gale and button-bushes projecting above the snow an dice. I see the shore from the waterside. A liberal walk, so level and wide and smooth, without underbrush. I easily approach and study the boughs which usual overhang the water. In sonic places where the ice is exposed, I see a kind of crystallized, chaffy snow like little bundles of asbestos on its surface . I seek some sunny nook on the south side of a wood, which keeps off the cold wind, among the maples and the swamp white oaks which are frozen in, and there sit and anticipate the spring, and hear the chickadees and the belching of the ice. The sun has got a new power in his rays after all, cold as the weather is. He could not have warmed me so much a month ago, nor should I have heard such rumblings of the ice in December.I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar.
If I were to paint the short days of winter, I should represent two towering icebergs, approaching each other like promontories, for morning and evening, with cavernous recesses, and a solitary traveller, wrapping his cloak about him and bent forward against a driving storm, just entering the narrow pass. I would paint the light of a taper at midday, seen through a cottage window half buried in snow and frost, and some pale stars in the sky, and the sound of the woodcutter's axe.The icebergs with cavernous recesses. In the foreground should appear the harvest, and far in the background,through the pass, should be seen the sowers in the fields and other evidences of spring. The icebergs should gradually approach, and on the right and left the heavens should be shaded off from the light of midday to midnight with its stars. The sun low in the sky.
I look between my legs up the river across Fair Haven.Subverting the head, we refer things to the heavens ;the sky becomes the ground of the picture, and where the river breaks through low hills which slope to meet each other a quarter of a mile off, appears a mountain pass, so much nearer is it to heaven . We are compeled to call it something which relates it to the heavens rather than the earth. But I think that the mirage is not so great in the morning. Perhaps there is some advantagein looking at the landscape thus at this season, since it is a plain white field hence to the horizon.
I cut my initials on the bee tree. Now, at 11.30 perhaps, the sky begins to be slightly overcast. The north-west is the god of the winter, as the southwest of the summer. Interesting the forms of clouds, often, as now,like flames, or more like the surf curling before it breaks,reminding me of the prows of ancient vessels, which have their pattern or prototype again in the surf, as if the wind made a surf of the mist. Thus, as the fishes look up at the waves, we look up at the clouds. It is pleasant to see the reddish-green leaves of the lambkil still hanging with fruit above the snow, for I am now crossing the shrub oak plain to the Cliffs.
I find a place on the south side of this rocky hill, where the snow is melted and the bare gray rock appears covered with mosses and lichens and beds of oak leaves in the hollows, where I can sit, and an invisible flame and smoke seems to ascend from the leaves, and the sun shines with a genial warmth, and you can imagine the hum of bees amid flowers.That is a near approach to summer. A summer heat reflected from the dry leaves,which reminds you of the sweet-fern and those summer afternoons which are longer than a winter day. Though you sit on a mere oasis in the snow.
I love that the rocks should appear to have some spots of blood on them, Indian blood at least; to be convinced that the earth has been crowded with men,living, enjoying, suffering, that races passed away have stained the rocks with their blood, that the mould I tread on has been animated, aye, humanized. I am the more at home. I farm the dust of my ancestors,though the chemist's analysis may not detect it. I go forth to redeem the meadows they have become. I compel them to take refuge in turnips.
The snow is melting on the rocks ; the water trickles down in shining streams ; the mosses look bright ; the first awakening of vegetation at the root of the saxifrage. As I go by the farmer's yard, the hens cackle more solidly, as if eggs were the burden of the strain.
A horse's fore legs are handier than his hind ones ;the latter but fall into the place which the former have found. They have the advantage of being nearer the head, the source of intelligence. He strikes and paws with them. It is true he kicks with the hind legs, but that is a very simple and unscientific action, as if his whole body were a whip-lash and his heels the snapper.
The constant reference in our lives, even in the most trivial matters, to the superhuman is wonderful. If a portrait is painted, neither the wife's opinion of the husband, nor the husband's of the wife, nor either's opinion of the artist - not man's opinion of man – is final and satisfactory. Man is not the final judge of the humblest work, though it be piling wood. The queen and the chambermaid, the king and the hired man, the Indian and the slave, alike appeal to God.
Each man's mode of speaking of the sexual relation proves how sacred his own relations of that kind are.We do not respect the mind that can jest on this subject.
If the husband and wife quarrel over their coffee, if the pie is underdone, if your partner treads on your toes, there is a silent appeal to the just and eternal gods,- or to time and posterity, at least.
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