I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven,—would keep sober always, and lead a sane life not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish habitually use any other. Think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Wine is not a noble liquor, except when it is confined to the pores of the grape. Even music is wont to be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.[59] I have seen where the rain dripped from the trees on a sand-bank on the Marlborough road, that each little pebble which had protected the sand made the summit of a sort of basaltic column of sand,—a phenomenon which looked as if it might be repeated on a larger scale in nature. The goldenrods and asters impress me not like individuals but great families covering a thousand hills and having a season to themselves. The indigo-weed turns black when dry, and I have been interested to find in each of its humble seed-vessels a worm. The Deep Cut is sometimes excited to productiveness by a rain in midsummer. It impresses me somewhat as if it were a cave, with all its stalactites turned wrong side outward. Workers in bronze should come here for their patterns. Those were carrots which I saw naturalized in Wheeler’s field. It was four or five years since he planted there. To-day I saw a sunflower in the woods. It is pleasant to see the _Viola pedata_ blossoming again now, in September, with a beauty somewhat serener than that of these yellow flowers. The trees on the bank of the river have white furrows worn about them, marking the height of the freshets, at what levels the water has stood. Water is so much more fine and sensitive an element than earth. A single boatman passing up or down unavoidably shakes the whole of a wide river, and disturbs its every reflection. The air is an element which our voices shake still further than our oars the water. The red maples on the river, standing far in the water when the banks are overflown and touched by the earliest frosts, are memorable features in the scenery of the stream at this season. Now you can scent the ripe grapes far off on the banks as you row along. Their fragrance is finer than their flavor. My companion said he would drink when the boat got under the bridge, because the water would be cooler in the shade, though the stream quickly passes through the piers from shade to sun again. It is something beautiful, the act of drinking, the stooping to imbibe some of this widespread element, in obedience to instinct, without whim. We do not so simply drink in other influences. It is pleasant to have been to a place by the way a river went. The forms of trees and groves change with every stroke of the oar.