10 March 1856 – 16 March 1856

Thermometer at 7 a. m. 6° below zero. Dr. Bartlett’s, between 6.30 and 7 A. M., was at— 13°; Smith’s at— 13° or — 14°, at 6 a. M. P. M. — Up river to Hubbard Bridge. Thermometer +9° at 3.30 p. mM. (the same when I return at five). ‘The snow hard and dry, squeaking under the feet; excellent sleighing. A biting northwest wind compels to cover the ears. It is one of the hardest days of the year to bear. Truly a memorable 10th of March. There is no opening yet in the main stream at Prichard’s, Hubbard Bath, or the Clamshell, or probably any- where but at Merrick’s, and that a dozen rods long by ten feet; and it is tight and strong under the bridges. A bluebird would look as much out of place now as the 10th of January. I suspect that in speaking of the springing of plants in previous years I have been inclined to make them start too early generally. The ice on ponds is as solid as ever. There has been no softening of it. Now is a good time to begin to cut; only its great thickness would hinder you. The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever. It is hard to be- lieve the records of previous years. I have not seen a tree sparrow, methinks, since January. Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they have migrated further south. There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll. I saw perhaps one redpoll in the town; that is all. The pinched crows are feeding in the road to-day in front of the house and alighting on the elms, and blue jays also, as in the middle of the hardest winter, for such is this weather. The blue jays hop about in yards. The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days. I go over the fields now im any direction, sinking but an inch or two to the old solid snow of the winter. In the road you are on a level with the fences, and often considerably higher, and sometimes, where it is a level causeway in summer, you climb up and coast down great swells of hard-frozen snow, much higher than 1856) THE ART OF PRINTING 208 the fences. I may say that I have not had to climb a fence this winter, but have stepped over them on the snow. Think of the art of printing, what miracles it has accomplished! Covered the very waste paper which flutters under our feet like leaves and is almost as cheap, a stuff now commonly put to the most trivial uses, with thought and poetry! The woodchopper reads the wisdom of ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the son- nets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. ‘The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sports- man loads his gun, the traveller wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men. Surely he who can see so large a portion of earth’s surface thus darkened with the record of human thought and experience, and feel no desire to learn to read it, is without curiosity. He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born. Still there is little or no chopping, for it will not pay to shovel the snow away from the trees; unless they are quite large, and then you must work standing in It two feet deep. There is an eddy about the large trees be- side, which produces a hollow in the snow about them, but it lies close up to the small ones on every side. 10 p. ms— Thermometer at zero.

Thermometer at 7 a. m. 6°, yet, the fire going out, Sophia’s plants are frozen again. Dr. Bart- lett’s was — 4°. When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub off some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the in- habitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss. I fear the dissipation that travelling, going into society, even the best, the enjoyment of intellectual luxuries, imply. If Paris is much in your mind, if it is more and more to you, Concord is less and less, and yet it would be a wretched bargain to accept the proudest Paris in ex- change for my native village. At best, Paris could only be a school in which to learn to live here, a stepping- stone to Concord, a school in which to fit for this uni- versity. I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfac- tions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neigh- bors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me. A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him ? The sight of a marsh hawk in Concord meadows is worth more to me than the entry of the allies into Paris. In this sense I am not ambitious. I do not wish my native soil to become exhausted and run out through neglect. Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. It is strange that men are in such haste to get fame as teachers rather than knowledge as learners. I hear that Goodwin found one of his traps frozen in this morning, where it has not frozen before this year. P. M.—3.30, thermometer 24°. Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 244 inches thick, 113+ being snow ice, 12? water ice; and there is between 3 and 4 inches of crusted snow above this. The water rises to within 24 inches of the top of the ice, 2. e. between a ninth and tenth of the whole thickness. The clear ice has therefore gained 22 inches beneath since the 16th of February. It has gone on freezing under 21} inches of ice. Yet people very commonly say that it will not continue to freeze under half that thickness of snow and ice. It is a job to cut a hole now. Snow and ice together make a cur- tain twenty-eight inches thick now drawn over the pond. Such is the prospect of the fishes!

'The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s, and probably the few other small places which may have opened in the town, at the mouth of one or two brooks. I hear, from two sources, of portions of brooks, etc., being frozen over within two days, which had not frozen before this winter.

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond.

Friday. Quite warm. Thermometer 46°. 3 p. mM. — Up Assabet. The ice formed the fore part of this week, as that at Merrick’s noticed on the 12th, and heard of else- where in the Mill Brook, appears to have been chiefly snow ice, though no snow fell. It was apparently blown into the water during those extremely cold nights and assisted its freezing. So that it is a question whether the river would have closed again at Merrick’s on the night of the 10th and 11th, notwithstanding the intense cold, if the snow had not been blown into it, —a ques- tion, I say, because the snow was blown into it. I think it remarkable that, cold as it was, I should not have supposed from my sensations that it was nearly so cold as the thermometer indicated. Tapped several white maples with my knife, but find no sap flowing; but, just above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely. Where the sap had dried on the bark, shining and sticky, it tasted quite sweet. Yet Anthony Wright tells me that he attempted to trim some apple trees on the 11th, but was obliged to give up, it was so cold. They were frozen solid. This is the only one of eight or ten white and red maples that flows. I do not see why it should be. As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river, — for I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river, — the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — and I fancy the sap fast flowing in their pores. Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen.

Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hung a pail beneath to catch the sap. Mr. Chase (of the Town School), who has lived a hundred miles distant in New Hampshire, speaks of the snow-fleas as a spring phenomenon, — probably because the win- ter is more uniformly cold there, — and says that they think it time to stop making maple-sugar when they observe them. They get into the sap by myriads and trouble them much.

7 a. M. — The sap of that red maple has not begun to flow yet. The few spoonfuls in the pail and in the hole are frozen. These few rather warmer days have made a little impression on the river. It shows a rough, snowy ice in many places, suggesting that there is a river beneath, the water having probably oozed up or the snow blown and melted off there. A rough, softening snowy ice, with some darker spots where you suspect weakness, though it is still thick enough. . deep in a quart pail, — nearly all caught since morning. It now flows at the rate of about six drops in a minute. Has probably flowed faster this forenoon. It is perfectly | clear, like water. Going home, slipped on the ice, throwing the pail over my head to save myself, and spilt all but a pint. So it was lost on the ice of the river. When the river breaks up, it will go down the Concord into the Merrimack, and down the Merrimack into the sea, and there get salted as well as diluted, part being boiled into sugar. It suggests, at any rate, what various liquors, beside those containing salt, find their way to the sea, —the sap of how many kinds of trees! There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for.