Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/286

276 in my seat here in the warm sunshine and genial light.

Neither men nor things have any true mode of invitation but to be inviting. They who are ready to go are already invited.

Can that be a task which all things abet, and to postpone which is to strive against Nature?

July 2, 1851. It is a fresh, cool summer morning. From the road here, at N. Barrett's, at 8.30, the Great Meadows have a slight bluish, misty tinge in part, elsewhere a sort of hoary sheen, like a fine downiness, inconceivably fine and silvery far away, the light reflected from the grass blades, a sea of grass hoary with light, the counterpart of the frost in spring. As yet no mower has profaned it, scarcely a footstep since the waters left; miles of waving grass adorning the surface of the earth.

Last night, a sultry night which compelled one to leave all windows open. I heard two travelers talking aloud, was roused out of my sleep by their loud, day-like and somewhat unearthly discourse, at perchance one o'clock; from the country, whiling away the night with loud discourse. I heard the words Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips loudly spoken, and so did half a dozen of my neighbors who also were awakened. Such is fame. It affected me like Dante talking of the men of this world in the infernal