14 February 1859 – 20 February 1859

P. M. — On ice up Assabet to railroad.

P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond. I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath. I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. I see some remarkable overflowed ice. Here is one shield of an oval form, some twenty feet long, very regu- larly and interestingly mottled with yellowish or dead- leaf color, the stain of the mead, which by some law has been regularly distrib- uted through the white, yet so delicately shaded off that it almost makes you dizzy to look at it. It reminds me of the beginning of a higher organization, or bony structure in a molluscous fish. The overflow must have been from the centre, where it burst up and flowed each way. In the proper light I am surprised to detect very fine and perfectly regular curving rays within the ice, just like the veins of some leaves, only finer and more regular, bilateral, perhaps a trace of the water as it flowed, — say like the lines of a cowry shell. It is but imperfectly suggested in the drawing. Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever. A distant white birch, erect on a hill 2 against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine £ twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede A\S crawling up to heaven. The white oak leaves UB against the darker green of pines, now moist, fF Ge are far more reddish. Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers.’ Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one [in] my eye, and soon after I see the count- less dimples in the puddles on the ice. So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring- like rain begins, and we turn about. The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those | ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.

P. M.— From the entrance of the Mill road I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky, hardly reminding me of the con- cealed earth so far beneath. They are like a flaky crust of the earth,! a more ethereal, terebinthine, ever- green earth. It occurs to me that my eyes rest on them with the same pleasure as do those of the hen-hawk which has been nestled in them. My eyes nibble the piny sierra which makes the hori- zon’s edge, as a hungry man nibbles a cracker.

Have just read “Counterparts, or the Cross of Love,” by the author of “Charles Auchester.” It is very interesting —its illustration of Love and Friendship — as showing how much we can know of each other through sympathy merely, without any of the ordinary information. You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is in- significant tells you more about that one than words can. (How language is always found to serve best the highest moods, and expression of the highest truths!) If he wished to conceal something from you it would be apparent. It is as if a bird told you. Something of moment occurs. Your friend designs that it shall be a secret to you. Vain wish! You will know it, and his design. He says consciously nothing about it, yet as he is necessarily affected by it, its effect is visible to you. From this effect you infer the cause. Have you not al- ready anticipated a thousand possible accidents? Can you be surprised? You unconsciously through sym- pathy make the right supposition. No other will ac- count for precisely this behavior. You are disingenu- ous, and yet your knowledge exceeds the woodcraft of the cunningest hunter. It is as if you had a sort of trap, knowing the haunts of your game, what lures attract it, and its track, etc. You have foreseen how it will behave when it is caught, and now you only behold what you anticipated. Sometimes from the altered manner of our friend, which no cloak can possibly conceal, we know that some- thing has happened, and what it was, all the essential particulars, though it would be a long story to tell, — though it may involve the agency of four or five persons who never breathed it to you. Yet you are sure, as if you had detected all their tracks in the wood. You are the more sure because, in the case of love, effects follow their causes more inevitably than usual, this being a controlling power. Why, a friend tells all with a look, a tone, a gesture, a presence, a friendliness. He is pre- sent when absent. In the composition it is the greatest art to find out as quickly as possible which are the best passages you have written, and tear the rest away to come at them. Even the poorest parts will be most effective when they serve these, as pediments to the column. How much the writer lives and endures in coming before the public so often! A few years or books are with him equal to a long life of experience, suffering, etc. It is well if he does not become hardened. He learns how to bear contempt and to despise himself. He makes, as it were, post-mortem examinations of him- self before he is dead. Such 1s art. P. M. — The rain ceases, and it clears up at 5 p. M. It is a warm west wind and a remarkably soft sky, like plush; perhaps a lingering moisture there. What a revella|tion the blue and the bright tints in the west again, after the storm and darkness! It is the opening of the windows of heaven after the flood!