_May 14._--Home again; down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between 8 and 9 A.M. a full concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes--tail long--sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodpecker, and night and early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will--noons, the gurgle of thrush delicious, and _meo-o-ow_ of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness--perhaps ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I repeat it--don't want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. My own notes have been written off-hand in the latitude of middle New Jersey. Though they describe what I saw--what appear'd to me--I dare say the expert ornithologist, botanist or entomologist will detect more than one slip in them.) SAMPLES OF MY COMMON-PLACE BOOK I ought not to offer a record of these days, interests, recuperations, without including a certain old, well-thumb'd common-place book,[18] filled with favorite excerpts, I carried in my pocket for three summers, and absorb'd over and over again, when the mood invited. I find so much in having a poem or fine suggestion sink into me (a little then goes a great ways) prepar'd by these vacant-sane and natural influences. Note: [18] _Samples of my common-place book down at the creek:_ I have--says old Pindar--many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to the wise, though they need an interpreter to the thoughtless. Such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand. _H. D. Thoreau._ If you hate a man, don't kill him, but let him live.--_Buddhistic._ Famous swords are made of refuse scraps, thought worthless. Poetry is the only verity--the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal--and not after the apparent.--_Emerson_. The form of oath among the Shoshone Indians is, "The earth hears me. The sun hears me. Shall I lie?" The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of a man the country turns out.--_Emerson_. The whole wide ether is the eagle's sway: The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland.--_Euripides_. Spices crush'd, their pungence yield, Trodden scents their sweets respire; Would you have its strength reveal'd? Cast the incense in the fire.