"For women are by nature formed To feel some consolation when their tongue Gives utterance to the afflictions they endure." "O trebly blest the placid lot of those, Whose hearth-foundations are in pure love laid, Where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows, And wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid." _Sophocles._ "Note well a house that is prosperous among men, and you Will find virtue among its women folk." "Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guide Till thou canst order well thine own fireside." SEPTEMBER. "While slowly o'er the hills The unnerved day piles his prodigious sunshine. Here be gardens of Hesperian mould, Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern, Perfumes of light-green sumac, ivy thick, And old stone fences tottering to their fall, And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath, And most aerial mountains for the West." --_Channing._ [Illustration] WALDEN POND. MONDAY, 6. To Walden with May, who takes a pencil sketch for her collection. Thoreau's hermitage has disappeared, and the grounds are overgrown with pines and sumac, leaving the site hardly traceable. The shores of Walden are as sylvan as ever near Thoreau's haunt, but have been shorn of wood on the southern side. No spot of water in these parts has a more interesting history. It well deserved the poet's praises while Thoreau dwelt on its shores. "It is not far beyond the village church, After we pass the wood that skirts the road, A lake,--the blue-eyed Walden,--that doth smile Most tenderly upon its neighbor pines, And they as if to recompense this love, In double beauty spread their branches forth. This lake has tranquil loveliness and breadth, And of late years has added to its charms, For one attracted to its pleasant edge Has built himself a little hermitage, Where with much piety he passes life. "More fitting place I cannot fancy now, For such a man to let the line run off The mortal reel, such patience hath the lake, Such gratitude and cheer are in the pines. But more than either lake or forest's depths This man has in himself: a tranquil man, With sunny sides where well the fruit is ripe, Good front, and resolute bearing to this life, And some serener virtues, which control This rich exterior prudence, virtues high, That in the principles of things are set, Great by their nature and consigned to him, Who, like a faithful merchant, does account To God for what he spends, and in what way.