Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/48

38 were a rare flower. Now the various forms of oak leaves in sproutlands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. The chinquapin and black shrub oaks have such leaves as I fancy crowns were made of. And in the washing breeze the lighter under-sides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape. Perhaps, on the whole, as most of the undersides are of a glaucous hue, they add to the glaucous mistiness of the atmosphere which now has begun to prevail. The mountains are hidden. The first drought may be beginning. The dust is powdery in the street, and we do not always have dew in the night.

In some cases Fame is perpetually false and unjust. Or rather I should say that she never recognizes the simple heroism of an action, but only as connected with its apparent consequence. She praises the interested energy of the Boston Tea Party, but will be comparatively silent about the more bloody and disinterestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court House, simply because the latter was unsuccessful. Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs. The truest acts of heroism never reach her ear, are never published by her trumpet.

June 4, 1855. To Hubbard's Close.