I woke this morning in a sort of paradise. My room here is a most delightful change from my late narrow crib, consequently I awoke in a sort of ecstasy; I have not been in anything like it since I left Combe. It looks south-eastward, right away to Boston, which is full in sight, not much above a mile and a half off; and the masts of some shipping are visible, near where, I think, the steamers lie for England. It is a great relief to get into a nice house, with everything pleasant about one.
On Sunday I walked across a bit of wood and got into a bog, which was all covered with the blue Iris. I picked also some Andromeda and Kalmia.
This climate certainly is to my somewhat rheumatic constitution extremely trying. Think of passing without notice from 85° in the shade to a cold icy-damp east wind of 50°. At three o’clock the thermometer was 89° or 90° in the shade.
June 15.
This is a blazing hot day, which makes me truly wish myself in England. But it will pass, and indeed there is a cool breeze; but that gives one a chill at the same time that one is melting with heat. The autumn is said to be very pleasant, and I myself cared little for the winter. But from the middle of March onward, God help one!
I went to Longfellow’s and had a very pleasant dinner; Emerson, Hawthorne, and C. E. Norton. Hawthorne goes July 7. I am going to Emerson’s next Saturday. I more and more recognise his superiority to everybody I have seen.
Energy is a very ordinary thing; reasonableness is much less common, and does ten times the good. Spurring and lashing is not good; one loses quite as much in sense and sober discernment as one gains in anything else.
June 21.
It rained heavily in the night. To-day is pretty cool and pleasant, and the rain-drops lie on the broad tulip-tree leaves among the flowers which are now coming out, just through my open window. I came back yesterday from Emerson’s, after a pleasant Sunday. I saw Hawthorne again, and his children too, Julian and Una, and a little thing about two years old. Concord is pretty in summer, and a good deal cooler than Cambridge. I saw also Margaret Fuller’s mother at Emerson’s, and liked her. There were visitors from New York, a young Englishman, and a young German that has married a daughter of Concord, both in the artist line, and living in New York; and there was quite a little crowd of people in the evening.
June 22.