August 8th.—Mr. and Mrs. Whipple took tea with us.
August 12th.—Seven chickens hatched. J. T. Readley and brother called. Eight chickens.
August 19th.—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 21st.—Eight more chickens hatched. Ascended a mountain with my wife; a beautiful, mellow, autumnal sunshine.
August 24th.—In the afternoons, nowadays, this valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden sunshine as with wine.
August 31st.—J. R. Lowell called in the evening.
September 1st.—Mr. and Mrs. Lowell called in the forenoon, on their way to Stockbridge or Lebanon to meet Miss Bremer.
September 2d.—"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 3d.—Foliage of maples begins to change. Julian, after picking up a handful of autumnal maple-leaves the other day,—"Look, papa, here's a bunch of fire!"
September 7th.—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 those logs and sticks, intending them for his winter fires. 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 the 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.