[The small manuscript volume bearing on its first fly-leaf the legend printed on the preceding page is evidently a transcript of unused passages in the early journals, and this is also the case with several succeeding small volumes. See note on page 342. The following mottoes occupy the next three pages of the book.] "By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own: And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind." HERBERT, _The Church Porch_. "Friends and companions, get you gone! 'Tis my desire to be alone; Ne'er well, but when my thoughts and I _Do domineer in privacy_." BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_. "Two Paradises are in one, To live in Paradise alone." MARVELL, _The Garden_. [Illustration: _Henry David Thoreau in 1854, from the Rowse Crayon in the Concord Public Library_] THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU I 1837 (ÆT. 20) _Oct 22._ "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Do you keep a journal?" So I make my first entry to-day. SOLITUDE To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present,—I avoid myself. How could I be alone in the Roman emperor's chamber of mirrors? I seek a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor the lumber arranged. The Germans say, "Es ist alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst." THE MOULD OUR DEEDS LEAVE _Oct. 24._ Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould. So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of my future growth. As I live now so shall I reap. If I grow pines and birches, my virgin mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance, weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth.[4] SPRING _Oct 25._ She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy. "The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes, and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light vapor."—GOETHE, _Torquato Tasso_. THE POET "He seems to avoid—even to flee from us,— To seek something which we know not, And perhaps he himself after all knows not."—_Ibid._ _Oct 26._