Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/704

696 of getting out. Finally, the joyous uprising curve with which, coming to the open part of the window, it emerges into the cheerful glow outside.

August 4.—Dined at hotel with J.T. Fields. Afternoon drove with him to Pittsfield, and called on Dr. Holmes.

August 5.—Drove with Fields to Stockbridge, being thereto invited by Mr. Field of Stockbridge, in order to ascend Monument Mountain. Found at Mr. Field's, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Duyckink of New York; also Mr. Cornelius Matthews and Herman Melville. Ascended the mountain,—that is to say, Mrs. Fields and Miss Jenny Field, Mr. Field and Mr. J.T. Fields, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Duyckink, Matthews, Melville, Mr. Harry Sedgwick, and I,—and were caught in a shower. Dined at Mr. Field's. Afternoon, under guidance of J.F. Headley, the party scrambled through the Ice Glen. Left Stockbridge and arrived at home about eight P.M.

August 7.—Messrs. Duyckink, Matthews, and Melville called in the forenoon. Gave them a couple of bottles of Mr. Mansfield's champagne, and walked down to the lake with them. At twilight Mr. Edwin P. Whipple and wife called from Lenox.

August 19.—Monument Mountain, in the early sunshine; its base enveloped in mist, parts of which are floating in the sky; so that the great hill looks really as if it were founded on a cloud. Just emerging from the mist is seen a yellow field of rye, and above that, forest.

August 24.—In the afternoons, this valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden sunshine, as with wine.

August 31.—J.R. Lowell called in the evening. September 1st, he called with Mrs. Lowell in the forenoon, on their way to Stockbridge or Lebanon, to meet Miss Bremer.

September 2.—"When I grow up," quoth J, in illustration of the might to which he means to attain,—"when I grow up, I shall be two men!"

September 3.—Foliage of maples begins to change.

In a wood, a heap or pile of logs and sticks that had been cut for firewood, and piled up square, in order to be carted away to the house when convenience served, or rather to be sledded in sleighing-time. But the moss had accumulated on them, and, leaves falling over them from year to year, and decaying, a kind of soil had quite covered them, although the softened outline of the woodpile was perceptible in the green mound. It was perhaps fifty years, perhaps more, since the woodman had cut and piled these logs and sticks, intending them for his winter fire. But he probably needs no fire now. There was something strangely interesting in this simple circumstance. Imagine the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and family, and one old man who was a little child when the wood was cut, coming back from their graves, and trying to make a fire with this mossy fuel.

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

October 13.—A cool day,—the wind northwest, with a general prevalence of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief, sudden glimpses of sunshine. The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless Sphinx, wrapt 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.

October 13.—One of the children,