1 March 1858 – 7 March 1858

The divergent open capsules (?) of the rhodora, yellowish-brown, are quite interesting when the sun falls on them. We have just had a winter with absolutely no sleighing, which I do not find that any one distinctly remembers the like of. It may have been as warm before, but with more snow. It was wonder- fully warm and pleasant up to the 10th of February, and since then the greatest degree of cold I have heard of was —4°. The ground has been partially covered or whitened only since the 20th. It has been an ex- cellent winter for walking in the swamps, or walking anywhere, and for lumbering operations in Maine, there being not too much snow, and yet the swamps, etc., frozen there.

Snowed last night and this morning, about seven inches deep, much more than during the winter, the first truly wintry-looking day so far as snow is concerned; but the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black. But it is as yet neither wheeling nor sleigh- ing, the ground being muddy. I remember to have seen these wood-lots being cut this winter: a little on the southwest edge of R. W. E.’s Pinnacle; Stow’s, up to east end of cold pool; north- west corner of Gowing’s, next Great Fields and Moore; an acre or more of the southwest part of the Dennis swamp by railroad; Cyrus Hosmer’s, southwest of Desert; and west of Marlborough road; except north part of last. I walk through the Colburn farm pine woods by railroad and thence to rear of John Hosmer’s. See a large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow. I stand near a flock in an open field. They are trotting about briskly over the snow amid the weeds, — apparently pigweed and Roman wormwood, —as it were to keep their toes warm, hopping up to the weeds. Then they restlessly take to wing again, and as they wheel about one, it is a very rich sight to see them dressed in black and white uniforms, alternate black and white, very dis- tinct and regular. Perhaps no colors would be more effective above the snow, black tips (considerably more) to wings, then clear white between this and the back, which is black or very dark again. One wonders if they are aware what a pleasing uniform appearance they make when they show their backs thus. They alight again equally near. ‘Their track is much like a small crow’s track, showing a long heel and furrow- ing the snow between with their toes. The last new journal thinks that it is very liberal, nay, bold, but it dares not publish a child’s thought on important subjects, such as life and death and good books. It requires the sanction of the divines just as surely as the tamest journal does. If it had been pub- lished at the time of the famous dispute between Christ and the doctors, it would have published only the opin- ions of the doctors and suppressed Christ’s. There is no need of a law to check the license of the press. It is law enough, and more than enough, to itself. Virtually, the community have come together and agreed what things shall be uttered, have agreed on a platform and to excommunicate him who departs from it, and not one in a thousand dares utter anything else. There are plenty of journals brave enough to say what they think about the government, this being a free one; but I know of none, widely circulated or well conducted, that dares say what it thinks about the Sunday or the Bible. They have been bribed to keep dark. They are in the service of hypocrisy.

Thermometer 14° this morning, and this makes decent sleighing of the otherwise soft snow. Father Rasle’s dictionary of the Abenaki language amounts to a very concentrated and trustworthy natu- ral history of that people, though it was not completed. What they have a word for, they have a thing for. A traveller may tell us that he thinks they used a pave- ment, or built their cabins in a certain form, or soaked their seed corn in water, or had no beard, etc., etc.; but when one gives us the word for these things, the question is settled, — that is a clincher. Let us know what words they had and how they used them, and we can infer almost all the rest. The lexicographer not only says that a certain people have or do a certain thing, but, being evidently a disinterested party, it may be allowed that he brings sufficient evidence to prove it. He does not so much assert as exhibit. He has no transient or private purpose to serve. The snow balls particularly when, as now, colder weather comes after a damp snow has fallen on muddy ground, and it is soft beneath while just freezing above. I grow so fast and am so weighed down and hindered, that I have to stop continually and look for a rock where I may kick off these newly acquired heels and soles.

Went to hear a Chippeway Indian, a Doctor Mung-somebody, — assisted by a Penobscot, who said nothing. He made the audience laugh un- intentionally by putting an m after the word too, which he brought in continually and unnecessarily, and almost after this word alone, emphasizing and prolonging that sound, as, “They carried them home toom-ah,”’ as if it were a necessity for bringing in so much of the Indian language for a relief to his organs or a com- pensation for “twisting his jaws about,” as he said, in his attempt to speak English. So Polis and the Penobscots continually put the wm or em to our words, — as paddlum, littlum, etc. ‘There was so much of unsubdued Indian accent resounding through his speech, so much of the “bow-arrow tang!”’ I have no doubt it was a great relief to him and seemed the word best pronounced.’

P. M.—Up river on ice to Fair Haven Pond. The river is frozen more solidly than during the past winter, and for the first time for a year I could cross it in most places. I did not once cross it the past winter, though by choosing a safe place I might have done so, without doubt, once or twice. But I have had no river walks before. I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is in- spiring as the voice of a spring bird. That light spongy bark about the base of the nesza appears to be good tinder. I have only to touch one end to a coal, and it all burns up slowly, without blaz- ing, in whatever position held, and even after being dipped in water.

Walking by the river this afternoon, it being half open and the waves running pretty high, —the black waves, yellowish where they break over ice, —I inhale a fresh, meadowy, spring odor from them which is a little exciting. It is like the fragrance of tea to an old tea-drinker.