3 March 1856 – 9 March 1856

'To Cambridge.

To Carlisle, surveying. I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that 1 could not accept it, without a sense of degradation. He would not meet me on equal terms, but only be to some extent my patron. He would not come to see me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He would not readily accept a favor, but would gladly confer one. He treated me with cere- mony occasionally, though he could be simple and downright sometimes; and from time to time acted a part, treating me as if I were a distinguished stranger; was on stilts, using made words. Our relation was one long tragedy, yet I did not directly speak of it. I do not believe in complaint, nor in explanation. The whole is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that we do not love each other, that we cannot confide in each other. I could not bring myself to speak, and so recognize an obstacle to our affection. I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuse- ness, perchance, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever.

Snowed an inch or two in the night. Went to Carlisle, surveying. It is very hard turning out, there is so much snow in the road. Your horse springs and flounders in it. The snow in the wood-lot which I measured was about two feet on a level.

P. M. — Up Assabet. The snow is softening. Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it. A thaw comes, and then the birches, which were gray on their white ground before, appear prettily clothed in green. I see various kinds of insects out on the snow now. On the rock this side the Lean- ing Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. He has left some scentless jelly-like substance an inch and a half in diameter there, yellowish beneath, maybe part of a fish, or clam (?), or himself. The leaves still hanging on some perhaps young swamp white oaks are re- markably fresh, almost ochre-colored brown. See the snow discolored yellowish under a (probably) gray squirrel’s nest high in a pitch pine, and acorn- shells about on it. Also a squirrel’s track on the snow over Lee’s Hill. The outside toe on the fore feet is nearly at right angles with the others. This also dis- tinguishes it from a rabbit’s track. It visits each apple tree, digs up frozen apples and sometimes filberts, and when it starts again, aims for an apple tree, though fifteen rods distant.

P. M.— Measured snow on account of snow which fell 2d and 4th. West of railroad, 16+; east of railroad, 16; average, say 16+; Trillium Wood, 21. Probably quite as deep as any time before, this year. There are still two or more inches of ice next the ground in open land. I may say that there has not been less than sixteen inches of snow on a level in open land since January 13th. My stick entered the earth in some cases in the wood, as it has not done before. There has been some thawing under the snow.

Thermometer at 2 Pp. Mm. 15°, sixteen inches of snow on a level in open fields, hard and dry, ice in Flint’s Pond two feet thick, and the aspect of the earth is that of the middle of January in a severe winter. Yet this is about the date that bluebirds arrive com- monly. A pail of water froze nearly half an inch thick in my chamber, with fire raked up. The train which should have got down last night did not arrive till this afternoon (Sunday), having stuck in a drift.