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.
