PREFACE.
With the present volume, the four seasons, as they are represented in Thoreau's journal, are nominally completed, though but a part of the Spring and Summer has been given, and much has been omitted in all the four volumes printed.
As I have said before, my own interest in the journal is in the character and genius of the writer, rather than in any account of the phenomena of nature. According to Thoreau's own view, such a journal is, in the strictest sense, an autobiography. "Our thoughts," he says, "are the epochs in our lives; all else is but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were here." And again in this volume, under October 21, 1857, "Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he the actual hero, lived from day to day." As the "Week on the
