BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE
_Feb. 11, '80_.--At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera house, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never did music more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove its soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosen and perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders. Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods--but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment of the postures of naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly--every motion a study. I allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own pensiveness, joyousness.
A HINT OF WILD NATURE
_Feb. 13_.--As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital though momentary view of them, and then of their course on and on southeast, till gradually fading--(my eyesight yet first rate for the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading.) Queer thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing these creatures cleaving the sky--the spacious, airy realm--even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)--the waters below--the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a minute--flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of sea, sky, shore--and then disappearing in the distance.
LOAFING IN THE WOODS
_March 8_.--I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot, seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'd everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everything solitary, ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon--(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the _stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to appear.
_Next day, 9th_.--A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, holly-trees, laurels, &c., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled, bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tall straight columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinous odor blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.)
A CONTRALTO VOICE
_May 9, Sunday_.--Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s--good supper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Ein feste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of English stanzas,) came the music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's dim roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glass windows broke through the tree-shadows. And under all--under the Northern Crown up there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the _chiaroscuro_ of the night, that liquid-full contralto.
SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE
_June 4, '80_.--For really seizing a great picture or book, or piece of music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first time even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the mystery of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes some lucky five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination of years of reading and travel and thought. The present case about two o'clock this afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action and color and majestic grouping, in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly crossing the Suspension bridge-not a full stop anywhere, but next to it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out on the platform. The falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct, and no roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far below me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as brief, that picture--a remembrance always afterwards. Such are the things, indeed, I lay away with my life's rare and blessed bits of hours, reminiscent, past--the wild sea-storm I once saw one winter day, off Fire island--the elder Booth in Richard, that famous night forty years ago in the old Bowery--or Alboni in the children's scene in Norma--or night-views, I remember, on the field, after battles in Virginia--or the peculiar sentiment of moonlight and stars over the great Plains, western Kansas--or scooting up New York bay, with a stiff breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink. With these, I say, I henceforth place that view, that afternoon, that combination complete, that five minutes' perfect absorption of Niagara--not the great majestic gem alone by itself, but set complete in all its varied, full, indispensable surroundings.
JAUNTING TO CANADA
To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8 o'clock P.M., June 3, on a first-class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley (North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrived at 8, morning, and had a bounteous breakfast. I must say I never put in such a good night on any railroad track--smooth, firm, the minimum of jolting, and all the swiftness compatible with safety. So without change to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, where we arrived early afternoon; then on to London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less than twenty-two hours altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable house of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden and lawns of the asylum.
SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE
_June 6_.--Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) main Insane asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story. Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all scrupulously clean and sweet. Some three hundred persons present, mostly patients. Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying, or suggesting, _that audience_, deeply impress'd me. I was furnish'd with an arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, yet perfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation. The quaint dresses and bonnets of some of the women, several very old and gray, here and there like the heads in old pictures. O the looks that came from those faces! There were two or three I shall probably never forget. Nothing at all markedly repulsive or hideous--strange enough I did not see one such. Our common humanity, mine and yours, everywhere:
"The same old blood--the same red, running blood;"
yet behind most, an inferr'd arriere of such storms, such wrecks, such mysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems, crosses--mirror'd from those crazed faces (yet now temporarily so calm, like still waters,) all the woes and sad happenings of life and death--now from every one the devotional element radiating--was it not, indeed, _the peace of God that passeth all understanding_, strange as it may sound? I can only say that I took long and searching eyesweeps as I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedented thoughts, problems unanswerable. A very fair choir, and melodeon accompaniment. They sang "Lead, kindly light," after the sermon. Many join'd in the beautiful hymn, to which the minister read the introductory text, _In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire_. Then the words: