Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/136

122 wind makes the desert without a rustle. To every being, consequently, its own first cause is an invisible and inconceivable agent.

Some questions which are put to me are as if I should ask a bird what she will do when her nest is built, and her brood reared.

I cannot make a disclosure. You should see my secret. Let me open my doors never so wide, still within and behind them, where it is unopened, does the sun rise and set, and day and night alternate. No fruit will ripen on the common.

Oct. 18, 1855. How much beauty in decay! I pick up a white-oak leaf, dry and stiff, but yet mingled red and green, October-like, whose pulpy part some insect has eaten, beneath, exposing the delicate network of its veins. It is very beautiful held up to the light; such work as only an insect eye could perform. Yet, perchance, to the vegetable kingdom, such a revelation of ribs is as repulsive as the skeleton in the animal kingdom. In each case, it is some little gourmand working for another end, that reveals the wonders of nature. There are countless oak leaves in this condition now, and also with a submarginal line of network exposed.

Oct. 18, 1856. Rain all night and half this day. A-chestnutting, down turnpike and across to Britten's. It is a rich sight, that of