8 March 1858 – 14 March 1858

Went to a concert of instrumental music this evening. The imitations of the horn and the echo by the violoncello were very good, but the sounds of the clarionet were the most liquid and melodious. It is a powerful instrument and filled the hall, realizing my idea of the shepherd’s pipe. It was a conduit of gurgling melody, but it apparently required a great effort of the lungs. Its sounds entered every cranny of the hall and filled it to repletion with sweet liquid melody. There was no squeaking, no jarring string, no fuzzy breathing, no rattling stops; but pure melody, flowing in its own invisible and impalpable channels.

About three inches more of snow fell last night, which, added to about five of the old, makes eight, or more than before since last spring. Pretty good sleighing. The State commonly grants a tract of forest to make an academy out of,’ for such is the material of which our institutions are made, though only the crudest part of it is used, but the groves of the academy are straight- way cut down, and that institution is built of its lumber, its coarsest and least valuable part. Down go the groves of the academy and up goes its frame, —on some bare common faraway. And as for the public domains, if anybody neglected his civil duties during the last war, he is privileged to cut and slash there, — he is let loose against one hundred and sixty acres of well-behaved trees, as if the liberty he had defended was derived from liber, bark, and meant the liberty to bark the trees.