brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to
prop it up. I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,--great,
round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree. A
pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet
fruit, which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the
peaches. There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous
abundance; it is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving
it a shake, with the intention of bringing down a single one, when,
behold, a dozen come thumping about our ears. But the idea of the
infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well
worth attaining; and I never had it so vividly as now, when I find
myself, with the few mouths which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of
the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. His children, his friends in the
village, and the clerical guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were
all wont to eat and be filled from these trees. Now, all these hearty
old people have passed away, and in their stead is a solitary pair,
whose appetites are more than satisfied with the windfalls which the
trees throw down at their feet. Howbeit, we shall have now and then a
guest to keep our peaches and pears from decaying.

G---- B----, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm,
called on me last evening, and dined here to-day. He has been
cultivating vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the
market. What a singular mode of life for a man of education and
refinement,--to spend his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then
to convey the products of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public
market, and there retail them out,--a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of
turnips, a squash, a dozen ears of green corn! Few men, without some
eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and
it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost
gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he
returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle
people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his
spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare
man,--a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character
to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for,
should you seize upon any characteristic, it would inevitably