Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/128

114 have thought it his one idea), only getting their attention when they required some external aid to save them from starving. Then indeed they were good Christians.

Oct. 15, 1858. If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones—uniformly deep, dark scarlet—will be the scarlet oaks. The next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon?), are the white oaks. Then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green, and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak.

Oct. 15, 1859. The chickadees sing as if at home. Theirs is an honest, heartfelt melody. Shall not the voice of man express as much content as the note of a bird?

Oct. 16, 1857. Up Assabet. I stop a while at Cheney's shore to hear an incessant musical twittering from a large flock of young goldfinches which have dull yellow, drab and black plumage. Young birds can hardly restrain themselves, and, if they did not leave us, might perchance burst forth into song in the later Indian-summer days. Am surprised to find an abundance of witch hazel now at the height of its change. The tallest bushes are bare, though in bloom; but the lowest are full of leaves, many of them green, but chiefly clear and