Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (532 page)

September 19th. — Lying by the lake yesterday afternoon, with my eyes shut, while the waves and sunshine were playing together on the water, the quick glimmer of the wavelets was perceptible through my closed eyelids.

October 13th. — A windy day, with wind northwest, cool, with a prevalence of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief, quick glimpses of sunshine.

The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless sphinx, wrapped in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly magnificent just in these days.

One of the children, drawing a cow on the blackboard, says, “I'll kick this leg out a little more,” — a very happy energy of expression, completely identifying herself with the cow; or perhaps, as the cow's creator, conscious of full power over its movements.

October 14th. — The brilliancy of the foliage has passed its acme; and indeed it has not been so magnificent this season as in some others, owing to the gradual approaches of cooler weather, and there having been slight frosts instead of severe ones. There is still a shaggy richness on the hillsides.

October 16th. — A morning mist, filling up the whole length and breadth of the valley betwixt my house and Monument Mountain, the summit of the mountain emerging. The mist reaches almost to my window, so dense as to conceal everything, except that near its hither boundary a few ruddy or yellow tree-tops appear, glorified by the early sunshine, as is likewise the whole mist-cloud.

There is a glen between this house and the lake, through which winds a little brook with pools and tiny waterfalls over the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in the summer, it is all a dense shadow of obscurity. Now, the foliage of the trees being almost entirely a golden yellow, instead of being full of shadow, the glen is absolutely full of sunshine, and its depths are more brilliant than the open plain or the mountain-tops. The trees are sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves being freshly fallen, the glen is strewn with sunshine, amid which winds and gurgles the bright, dark little brook.

December 1st. — I saw a dandelion in bloom near the lake.

December 19th. — If the world were crumbled to the finest dust, and scattered through the universe, there would not be an atom of the dust for each star.

“Generosity is the flower of justice.”

The print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a town.

Sketch of a personage with the malignity of a witch, and doing the mischief attributed to one, — but by natural means; breaking off love-affairs, teaching children vices, ruining men of wealth, etc.

Ladislaus, King of Naples, besieging the city of Florence, agreed to show mercy, provided the inhabitants would deliver to him a certain virgin of famous beauty, the daughter of a physician of the city. When she was sent to the king, every one contributing something to adorn her in the richest manner, her father gave her a perfumed handkerchief, at that time a universal decoration, richly wrought. This handkerchief was poisoned with his utmost art, . . . . and they presently died in one another's arms.

Of a bitter satirist, — of Swift, for instance, — it might be said, that the person or thing on which his satire fell shrivelled up as if the Devil had spit on it.

The Fount of Tears, — a traveller to discover it, — and other similar localites.

Benvenuto Cellini saw a Salamander in the household fire. It was shown him by his father, in childhood.

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 advertisements, — 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 Hancock, 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 weathercock 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 shines 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 fishing-pole, and the Equinoctial Line for a fishing-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 spaces of grass 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 shells 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 shell. 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; spaces where the snow was more imperfectly dissolved than elsewhere little crackling spots, where a thin surface of ice, over the real mass, crumples beneath one's foot; the track of a line of footsteps, most of them vaguely formed, but some quite perfectly, where a person passed 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 passed 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 attitude, 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 grass is green and the trees in leaf. At one end, too, we are sensible of precipitous descents, black and shaggy 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 shore, 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 grass 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 grass 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.