March 24, 1857. If you are describing any occurrence or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though, you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported. If we have recently met and talked with a man and would report our experience, we commonly make a very partial report at first, failing to seize the most significant, picturesque, and dramatic points. We describe only what we have had time to digest and dispose of in our minds without being conscious that there were other things really more novel and interesting to us which will not fail to occur to us and impress us suitably at last. How little that occurs to us, are we prepared at once to appreciate. We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods, to preserve the whole force of it.
March 24, 1858. p. m. To Fairhaven Pond, east side. The pond not yet open. A cold north-by-west wind which must have come over much snow and ice. The chip of the song sparrow resembles that of the robin, i. e., its expression is the same, only fainter, and reminds me that the robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip or call note to its kind.
